


There Are No Monsters Here

by TheMadWires



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen, Good Dad Au, Honerva as Lady Not Technically Appearing In This Fanfic, Minor Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, as in this alternate universe exists in a canon that has a lot of alternate universes, but she not technically appears a LOT okay, enough headcanons to win the war in a single bombardment, irrational canon timeline, no beta reader we die like men, perfect universe, the last universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:29:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22021837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMadWires/pseuds/TheMadWires
Summary: When an unknown quantum Event of some kind ripples through their universe, young Lotor and Allura react more strongly than anyone.  Visions of the sky ripping apart.  Visions of monsters that look like their loved ones.  As they grow in a universe that some outside observers once saw as 'perfect', it becomes increasingly clear that whatever happened both they, and those loved ones, had some kind of ties to it.A technically canon-compliant AU that still lets me explore stuff like the racial and cultural tensions of the Coalition, dink around with Oldadins, a living Daibazaal and Altea, Lotor growing up with a decent-but-not-without-strains relationship with his dad, and most importantly teen Allura and tiny Lotor being absolute shits to each other while also coming to terms as they grow up with who and what they MUST be both on a political and quantum scale.  Starts mostly with Zarkon and Alfor being Very Concerned Dads.Tags will be added with relevant content.
Relationships: Alfor & Allura (Voltron), Alfor & Coran (Voltron), Alfor & Zarkon (Voltron), Allura & Lotor (Voltron), Lotor & Zarkon (Voltron), Other Relationship Tags to Be Added
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11





	1. 0

**Author's Note:**

> The timeline might feel a little weird, since the 'last universe'/'perfect universe' from season 8 had everyone so young it's obviously in the distant past, but at the same time, this takes place post-series. This story casually assumes Honerva traveled both space and time in her search for the perfect universe, since we've seen wormholes she tinkered with do that back in season 1.

**0**

Later, it would be unanimously agreed that some manner of Event had occurred. The great Alchemists of Altea would marvel and murmur over the sudden hitch in space-time; they would compare their notes to those of facilities around the galaxy and wonder at the fluctuations in the quintessence of Daibazaal's lunar rift at the same moment; the magnetic swell in the winds on Rygnirath; the single vibration that shuddered the tides of Nalquod; the lone beat of thoughtlessness in the vast spore-warrens laced throughout the great ring of the Deltarian Belt; the single darkening flicker, however brief, of infinite distant stars. Later, it would become a matter of any number of papers and conferences and debates what had happened there, what _could_ have happened there. The greatest minds of the Coalition would raise their voices over the nature of it—what monstrous quantum _happening_ could have rocked the universe so thoroughly and then vanished without a trace.

When it happened, the voice that rose was a child's, screaming out at the monster he saw wearing the face of his mother, snarling through the mask of her features as it lunged for him, there and then gone again just as quickly.

When it happened, the voice that rose was a young woman's, seized by visions of a war that cracked the heavens around her, ragged and gasping as if she, like the fabric of reality itself, were being torn asunder.

When it happened, the voice that rose was an old man, nerveless claws dropping weapons and clamping instead over his throat and mouth to muffle a sob at a glimpse of a lost love, her face changed by ages she had not lived to see.

When it happened, the voice that rose was a king, a single word of apology to the weapon he had made, but not those it had broken and not those who, in that moment, he had seen that it would someday break.

And that was all.

Later, the debates would seem to go on forever, endless, inconclusive all. A hundred thousand theories and conjectures would be put forward from countless more sources, by countless more voices, all speaking of a thing that they had not, when it happened, even noticed. Of an event—of an Event—of any magnitude which had been noticed only passively, in the past tense, in the murmur of their instruments. When it happened, in the moment that it happened, there were only four.

When it happened, they were all silenced.

And the universe moved on.


	2. 1

**1**

It was funny how things changed sometimes.

This was a sentiment that Alfor found himself reflecting on with no small frequency: not that things changed, because of coursethey did, it was the very _nature_ of things to change, and as an alchemist his very nature to change them even if it had not been, but rather and much more importantly how funny in a wholly unexpected, somewhere between irony and slapstick kind of _way_ that they often went about doing so. If anyone had told a young Alfor that he would someday be king of the great Altean empire, why, he would have laughed right in their face (and had, at that). What comedy! That he should be a great diplomat, and end the wars that had so long plagued their little slice of the galaxy? What folly! That he should be not only allies but friends with Nalquod, with Rygniri, with Deltarians, with—would anyone have even dared to jest about such a notion— _Galra?_ What an absolute roar!

And if someone had told him that he would come to miss the days when they were all always around—well. Sometimes when the absurdity of it all struck him he still did laugh at himself over that.

Galra ships, like everything else that the Galra made, were notoriously ugly. Huge, angular, sharp; like their pilots and passengers, each a brutish monolith driven by a hungry engine. As he watched this particular Galra ship bring itself down to the landing bay of the spaceport, cutting through the thin clouds beneath Altea's bright control rings like a crude black knife though white lace, throwing brute shadows over the delicate archs and curves of Altean architecture across the grounds, he reflected that while Honerva had done much for the Galra, much to advance their energy infrastructure and space program—more than Zarkon had ever let _him_ do to help, certainly—that she could have had the decency also to teach them a little bit about aesthetics. He would never have said as much to Zarkon, of course. Not in those words or any others.

Alfor turned his head to look at the man standing beside and just behind him on the right. If he hadn't already been smiling, the look of faint distaste valiantly attempting to hide behind the prodigious ginger mustache as he watched the ship come in would have teased it out of him. “I bet you haven't missed watching these land here, Coran.”

There had been a time, many, many decaphoebs ago, that Coran might have tried to hide his feelings on the matter to spare Alfor's. Now his broad nose wrinkled up slightly, squinting the corners of his eyes. The nest of forming wrinkles, subtle but more and more undeniably there, had not surrounded them back in those days. “No, your majesty. I can't say that I have.” He jerked his chin upward to indicate the enormous craft coming in. “I thought he was coming in with a small entourage. Looks like he brought the whole planet with him.”

“Well, it's all relative, old friend. All relative. Galra small and and Altean small, you know--”

“Ugh, those hyperspace engines. I know.” The wrinkles only deepened as Coran's expression of dislike became even more dramatic, and Alfor couldn't help but laugh at it a little. More, if only because of how things had changed: “You know they won't even let me in to take a look at them.”

“I thought you hated those things.”

“Well I do, but from an engineering standpoint I'd like to take a look.”

Alfor reached up and clapped him on the shoulder companionably. “Give it a few more decaphoebs. They're still excited to have proprietary technology. It's still new and exciting for them.”

Coran smiled back at him, but then looked back up and gave the Galra craft a sniff of disapproval again. “You mean they've still got trust issues.”

Alfor grinned and held up a single finger. By the look Coran shot him, half warning, half distaste, and long-suffering by more than half by far, he already knew what Alfor meant to say before the words ever crossed his lips. “ _Nivzverit galra,”_ he said, managing to sound almost philosophical before bursting into laughter at Coran's exasperated sigh.

“Please don't speak that ugly language, Majesty,” he lamented, before poking Alfor's finger back in kind. “And it doesn't mean _they_ can't trust anyone _else_. Things are _better_ these days, King Alfor, and have been for a good while now. They could stand to be a little grateful for it. Anyway they shouldn't be hiding things from the rest of the Coalition--”

Any reply that Alfor might have made to that would have to wait; the end of Coran's sentence was swallowed up entirely in the rumble and roar of the Galra ship, now descended to the level of the spaceport and finalizing its landing. Nearly everyone around the spaceport that Alfor could see, ship and base crews alike, reached up to clap their hands over their ears. Altean ships were sleek and minimal and, while not silent, significantly more quiet for their size than anything the Galra made. More than once he had thought in private that the sheer loudness of the ships would—certainly _ought to—_ drive the Galra, who so valued stealth and silence, to seek further assistance in fine-tuning their spacefaring technology, but thus far they had kept to their own counsel on the matter.

He'd be lying if he said he didn't resent it a little. But he never would have said as much to Zarkon—not in those words or any others.

This Galra ship was a private vessel; though closer in size to an Altean cruiser it _was_ quite small and unostentatious as Galra ships went, only just large enough to make the journey from Daibazaal in a matter of spicolian movements (not _quite_ an entire phoeb), with most of its mass taken up by the ungainly hyperspace engines, still screaming as they spooled down. Nearly an entire phoebe might have still seemed terribly slow to Alfor, used to foldspace and wormhole travel as he was, but he knew that it was in fact _very_ exciting for the Galra, whose ships had until less than fifty decaphoebes ago been confined to their own star system and vicinity, the race's slow but inexorable spread throughout the galaxy facilitated by the ships of other species who encountered them. He could still remember, very clearly, the first time he had spoken of the new ships with Zarkon—the way that his enthusiasm had seemed to fill his body up like a physical presence, making him seem somehow even larger and more animate; the way that it had lit up his eyes so brightly their natural soft glow seemed dark and dull by comparison. He could still remember (less clearly, less often, but always when he heard the hellish screaming that their engines made inside of atmosphere, always when he could not help some creeping and unlovely part of his mind from thinking it made them sound as if they were powered by lost souls) how the sight had filled the pit of his stomach with a cold and inexplicable unease.

“I _hate_ these things!” Coran shouted over the din, hands still firmly planted over his pointed ears. Alfor gave him a thin smile and pat his shoulder.

But it was quieting down; it had, of course, been quieting down the moment it began, had begun as soon as the hyperspace engines had been disengaged, still out beyond the atmosphere where space swallowed whatever horrors emitted from the engine casings while active into its neutral and encompassing silence. He wondered if the sound translated at all into the shell of the ship itself, but dismissed the thought immediately; he had never been on one of the new Galra ships to hear for himself, but their ears were sensitive enough that he could hardly imagine how the ground crews coped with the aftermath, let alone those on the ships themselves. He couldn't hear half as well as half the Galra he'd met, and just the cooldown gave him headaches so deep they fraught his sleep with nightmares.

_If they ever went to war again--_

Alfor shoved the thought away as quickly as it began to rear its head. He did not know where it was headed or where it had come from, and he did not want to. He hadn't thought about such things in a long time, and deeply resented that he had been made to now for what felt like no reason at all.

The ship's side doors opened to release its passengers, and the thought, which had for an awful moment pushed back against him, was dissipated like so much smoke at the familiar sight of Zarkon in his dark red armor looming above his honor guard—not a one of the four less than a full head and shoulders taller than Alfor--from their midst like a m'tiga and its hatchlings in the entry. They were a traditional consideration at best: a Galra emperor was expected to meet challenges with his own two hands, and they were armed only with knives that Alfor was half convinced were all for show anyway. But Alfor was certain that Zarkon in particular could have lifted and tossed the lot of them, half with one arm and half with the other, at the same time. Not for the first time he wondered at what point a tradition crossed the line of absurdity into a running gag.

“My friend!” Alfor grinned unabashedly and held his arms out wide, as if to embrace Zarkon. Once, in the early days of the coalition he would have rushed to do so without hesitation. That he did not was no function of the distance that time and space and duty had grown between them over time (it was surely, he often assured himself, not _that_ great a distance after all), but a compromise he had made with Zarkon far earlier in their friendship.

Now, as every other time they greeted each other, as they had long since agreed, Zarkon also spread his arms wide, the gesture somehow somber in his hands, less an expression of joy and affection than one of ritual. Alfor had to fight against laughing at the unintended gravitas every time. It was indeed funny how things changed sometimes, from such a little thing as passing one hand to the other. “King Alfor.”

The small group of Galra descended the ramp down to the ground. Alfor wondered if their seeming unflappability in the face of the last lingering yowls and whines of the engine cooldown was a function of practice or simply their armor, which covered everything from head to toe except for the powerful jaws and wide mouths and hid their expressions quite admirably. On a few of them, this also exposed jutting, bestial tusks or a glimpse of crooked fang. Alfor moved forward to meet them eagerly, Coran trailing after him. Only when they reached the ground did the honor guard part. Zarkon stepped out from among them and stopped Alfor's forward rush by placing his great hands on Alfor's shoulders, so that Alfor's entire upper arms disappeared beneath them, and bent down to lower his own head far enough to touch the front of his armored helm against Alfor's crown.

“My friend,” he said softly, with a warmth that was still surprising to hear him convey even now, after so long a partnership and friendship.

Alfor's grin became even wider. “You look old, Zarkon. Are you taking care of yourself? Sleeping enough?

“I am in exemplary health for a Galra my age.”

The tone was humorless—the way Zarkon said it was almost portentous--but it was a joke that had run between them for nearly as long as they had known each other, and Alfor laughed at it. Perhaps Zarkon _did_ look a little rougher around the edges than usual this time--there were deep pits forming around his eyes, and Alfor could see his both his high sharp cheekbones and even his second maxillary spur, hidden for as long as Alfor had known him, beginning to emerge from a once full and nearly planeless face, little more than strange new shadows on his features but still and undeniably _there_. His smooth hide was beginning to show its texture, roughening into something leathery and mottled, here and there, with a darker purple than the rest, as if parts of his skin were attempting to match the bone spurs and plates that armored him elsewhere. Had all of it really happened since the last time they saw each other? But Galra did, after all, live only a fraction of the Altean lifespan, and it had after all been decaphoebs since they saw each other any more closely than a viewscreen, or with tinted visors between them. It was only reasonable that Zarkon had to start showing signs of age eventually, even if they were only clear on seeing him face to face.

The joke, of course, was that most Galra Zarkon's age were dead.

And didn't some ugly part of Alfor, some creeping an unlovely part of him, think it was funny how things turned around sometimes, somewhere between irony and slapstick, that he had outlived not only all of his Galra peers but also his Altean wife? Oh, he never would have said as much, not to Zarkon and not to anyone, not in those words or any others. But his smile faltered just a little, and he leaned his head back just a bit.

It was enough of a sign for Zarkon to straighten up again and remove his hands from Alfor's shoulders. “I am surprised to see only Coran with you. Given the nature of the message, I would have thought the children would be here.”

“Allura isn't a child anymore,” Alfor corrected him gently. “She's quite nearly an adult, you know.”

“She is still as child as Galra consider things.”

“Well she hasn't exactly got a tail to lose, has she? I daresay she'd be well past that--”

“How is my son?”

Alfor stopped, blinking up at him in surprise. While it was true that Zarkon preferred to get to the point of any meeting or visit over standing around exchanging pleasantries, it was not like him to interrupt—not when he was not comfortably on his home ground especially—and even less like him to sound quite that way if he did so; not blunt or even abrupt but almost blurted out, sharp and hard on edge. A tone that sounded the way his teeth looked. Alfor looked him over again, slowly, and then just as slowly reached out to put a hand over his. “...There's no change from what I told you,” he said as carefully as he could. “He hasn't been vocal since-- well, for almost a phoeb, except to call for you. But he's all right, Zarkon. I told you, he isn't hurt--”

Even more to Alfor's surprise, Zarkon moved his hand away, holding it tightly clenched at his side, vanishing under the cloak that fell around him. Beneath the visor of the helm that passed for a Galra crown, his eyes looked not only old but sunken. Tired. “There is more than one way to be wounded, Alfor. There is more than one way to hurt.”

Alfor blinked, shoulders dropping for just a moment before he squared them up again and waved a hand. “Stop being so dramatic, Zarkon.”

“You would behave the same if it were Allura.”

“And I am very frequently _very_ dramatic, as any of our friends would attest,” Alfor shot back. Nothing in Zarkon's tone spoke of attack or accusation, but he felt very much that he was being pushed back against. Herded into a corner. He did not like it, and it was enough to keep him from reminding Zarkon that Allura _had_ suffered a similar fit at the same time. It would have felt too much like defending himself. “You know that I'm always happy to see you, and I'm always happy to take you to see your son--”

“Then please do.”

“--but I'll _not_ be spoken to in such a way on my own soil,” he finished, refusing to let himself be interrupted this time. “So I suggest you take a moment to collect yourself. I doubt it would do Lotor much good to see you like this anyway.” And then, before he could stop it: “It's going to be upsetting enough for him to see how old you look.”

It had been a terrible thing to say; terrible and cruel, and he had known that before it even came out of his mouth. He had known it in the same moment that the thought made itself known. And yet he could not have stopped it even had he realized his intention to say it in the same way that he could not stop it from forming and could not stop some sense of satisfaction at seeing how quickly it brought Zarkon up short, jaw locking closed with such speed and finality Alfor heard the blunt clunk of his teeth hitting each other. He regretted it, yes, and strongly considered apologizing for it, but he could not stop the feeling of satisfaction.

There was a long moment, into which no one in the small group spoke. The honor guard had made neither move nor sound since they stopped their forward motion; they might as well have been statues. Coran cleared his throat uncomfortably and shifted his feet on the flattop.

“I am sorry,” Zarkon said quietly. “I was out of line. Please, Alfor. I am worried for my son.”

“I'm not trying to keep you from him. I'm trying to do what's best for both of you.”

“Of course. I know this.” Zarkon closed his eyes and drew in a long, deep breath through his nose. He held it for a moment, then slowly let it out through his mouth, hissing softly between his teeth. Alfor wondered if Zarkon, like him, had spared a thought for other times gone by that they had had similar such conversations, sometimes with the roles the same, sometimes with them reversed. He wondered if Zarkon, too, had spared a thought for the first time they had spoken of the new Galra ships.

“You know I love that boy as if he were my own.”

Zarkon's eyes opened into narrow slits. Alfor had not seen him squint even in the light of Altea in a long, long time, and he understood that this, now, had nothing to do with the brightness. He had looked at him much the same way when they had first met, well before they became friends, well before the coalition. Zarkon was _considering_ him. Assessing.

They had known each other far too long for all of that, and Alfor found that he did not like it coming back into the equation now. He reached out and knocked his knuckle against Zarkon's where it was hidden, still clenched tightly, beneath his cloak. “Like you love Allura.”

“...Of course.” Zarkon's hand loosened from its tight clench at last. His great shoulders rolled, as if shrugging off an unseen burden. His eyes opened fully again, tired, old, and Alfor found himself glad for it. “I am sorry that I am all dark dreams and dark waters with you. It is not personal. It has... It has been a long phoeb, Alfor. It is hard for me to be so far from my son as it is. But though my people still need me now, as ever, ever since you contacted me on Daibazaal I have had nothing on my mind but his well-being.”

Alfor smiled a little. “I thought Galra children were supposed to be terribly independent.”

“No. Galra _parents_ are supposed to be, and I am very bad at it.”

Alfor could not help but cackle at Zarkon's blunt tone. It burst out without his consent; even Coran coughed into his had behind him to hide a laugh. “I'm-- I'm sorry, old friend, I _promise_ I am not laughing at you!”

“You are, a bit.”

“A bit, all right,” he conceded. “A bit. Come on, then. Let's set you and your boy to rights. And maybe after that we can sit down and you'll finally let Coran and I talk you into fixing up those ships of yours. You know. So you can get here a little faster next time.”

“I am not _that_ tired.”

Alfor laughed again as he hooked his arm with Zarkon's and drew him away from the honor guard. All five Galra allowed it to happen without complaint. There was a time that it would not have been so, and though he blamed Zarkon to find himself thinking of it at all now he was surprised to find himself thinking of it distantly. It had not been so long ago at all by Altean reckoning, though for Galra, perhaps the idea of Alteans as enemies instead of allies was already a thing of the far past; stories from a prior generation and those before it. It had been the reality of most of his life, and Coran's, but of the five Galra present, only Zarkon would have remembered such a time. He wondered if the honor guard had ever seen the scars the Alteans had given their emperor. He wondered if Zarkon had told them how he he had gotten them. Who had given them to him.

He wondered if they, too, would think it funny how things changed sometimes.

* * *

Zarkon had never felt at ease on Altea, and he imagined that he never would. He had never felt at ease leaving his son on Altea, and he imagined that he never would, though he had come to accept that it was Lotor's desire to remain there, at least for the time being. Someday, he knew, Lotor wished to graduate from an Altean academy as an alchemist, as his mother had before him, and someday, Zarkon thought, he might tell the boy why the thought filled him with as much disgust as pride. Someday, he knew, Lotor would come home to Daibazaal, because someday Lotor wished to study the meteor scar himself, as his mother had before him--and someday, Zarkon thought, he might tell the boy that it was ultimately what had killed her.

The spaceport was excessive, full of purposeless, decorative flourishes and surrounded by landscaped grounds, which were themselves also excessive. He hated it, but the transports they boarded to leave it offered no escape, spacious enough to have seated dozens, as he could reckon, but intended for only four. He had not bothered to ask that the rest of his entourage be allowed to ride with them; he knew by now, by long practice, that only one would be permitted. Five was unlucky to the Alteans, and any more than that would have impinged on whatever bizarre propriety of space their hosts imagined for themselves. He had brought Paska, and told himself that it was because they had not been to Altea and might have needed more watching, and not because Paska took up more of that precious space than others.

The city itself was excessive. Except around the Castle of Lion's dock itself, where the ground had been allowed to remain, elevating the castle and the many buildings that made up the Sacreds' Sector over the city streets on a dramatic, stony hill, the natural earth of the planet had been planed until it was smooth and vanished from sight beneath the shining streets. Every structure was bright metal and open air, soft curving slopes and great archways that looked far too delicate for their function, when they even had one, like the overlapping sets of ring constructions that encompassed the planet. Spires and towers so fine they vanished into the blue sky almost directly overhead, then bloomed into expansive platforms of woven metal far above, their shadows decorative forms on the streets and buildings below. Wherever there were not whites or golds or the searing, uncomfortable blue of the Sacred, plantlife had been coaxed into strange shapes and colors not by a gardener's hands from without but by alchemists from within. It was all too bright, too saturated, too fully and patently _artificially_ organic. It settled aches in his eyes and in the deeps of his skull. He remembered all of it vividly: Alfor had made precious few changes.

Alfor was more than happy to tell him all about every one of them as their transport passed by them, of course. The expansions to the spaceport, which he had already known about. The new embassy that had been in the works the last time the Lions had docked, which had since been finished and enlarged once already. The conversions of the old harvest facilities and collection districts, still ongoing after all this time. Zarkon heard very little of the details, but wondered if Alfor had actually shut them down as early as he claimed to have.

“...Will my son learn about that at your academies?”

He spoke quietly, more musing to himself as he watched the city move by outside of the window than actually addressing the question to either Altean. He had not entirely been aware that he had spoken aloud at all until Alfor stopped nattering about the renewal of the district in the middle of a syllable, clicking the sound off in his throat. The silence was sudden and absolute. In their reflections, he watched as both Coran and Alfor went stiff and straight in their seats, staring at him slightly wide-eyed.

Coran recovered first. He expected it; Coran had spent more of his life around ugly people who said ugly things than Alfor had. Now, he drew himself up, rising off of the seat. Zarkon still had to look down at him when he turned his head to face them. “Just what are you trying to imply, Emperor Zarkon?”

“I imply nothing.” Zarkon regarded them both for a moment. Paska was watching closely. Assessing and, if he were to be honest, probably puzzling deeply over the uncomfortable mesh of formal and casual address and behavior that permeated the entire event. If he ordered them, they would take action. If he wanted to start a fight, it would be easy. He would not even have to strike the first blow: a few pointed words could make Alfor flinch as easily as Alfor had done it to him at the spaceport, and Coran would more than rise to the occasion if he did. And then what?

Instead, Zarkon shook his head and looked out the window again. He softened his tone. “I apologize. I meant nothing by it, I am simply tired.”

He could see Alfor's posture shift from one of profound discomfort to one of equally profound concern, and felt his jaw immediately clench in response. He had never cared for being fussed over, and he probably never would. He had never cared for Alfor's pity—and it _all_ felt like pity and charity coming from Alfor, something in the manner he held it out that rankled from the chipped plates on the back of his neck all the way down Zarkon's spine—and he knew that he never would. “Zarkon...not to be _that friend,_ but it's not like you to...to bring something like that up and then drop it again so quickly. Are you _sure_ you're all right?”

“It was not my intention to bring it up at all. I am tired,” he repeated firmly. “And I am worried about my son.”

“Well _he's_ all right. He's not talking to anyone, and he's been a bit jumpy, and yes, he certainly needs his father right now. But his health is fine and his tutor assures me that he's still being very diligent about his lessons. So.” There was a moment of hesitation before Alfor knit his fingers together, resting his elbows on his spread knees, and then leaned forward even further. He looked up at Zarkon from beneath the fall of his snowy hair, mouth drawn, blue eyes brimming with beneficence. He could not have looked more as if he were looking down on Zarkon if had tried. Poor foolish Galra, that look said, who did not know what was good for him. Zarkon's claws flexed within the tight mesh of his gloves, creaking faintly against the armrest. “To be completely honest, you're acting as out of sorts as he is, and I'm worried about you. Did--”

“I'm fine.” Too short. Too sharp. He watched Coran's posture tense. The look of pity and concern in Alfor's eyes seemed only to deepen.

“Zarkon. Did _you_ have any reaction to the event?”

And yet for a moment, just a single moment, Zarkon considered telling him the truth. He could not confirm that it had happened in the same instant as the thus-far unidentified blip on the cosmic radar ( _she would have had it pinned down by now_ flitted through his mind, bitter and longing and tired, so tired of the constant reminders of her absence, _pinned it down or gone mad with joy trying_ ) but he knew that it had been on the same quintant. He had looked at all of the reports, first those of his own people and then later those that had filtered in from their other allies in the coalition. He had understood little of it, but the timestamps were all clear enough. If anything, he was almost certain his incident had occurred slightly later. He did not know if that disqualified it or not.

Maybe that was why he shook his head. Or maybe it was Alfor's eyes. “I am just a tired old man worried about his son.”

Alfor continued to look at him doubtfully. Patiently. Waiting for him to come around.

Zarkon's mouth twitched slightly instead. “Do you think that I am lying to you, Alfor?”

“Well you know, I'd love to not, but there's this saying you're always quoting at me, something along the lines of--”

“ _Nivzverit galra,_ ” they both said, not quite in unison but still very much together.

It was enough. Alfor laughed and clapped his hands on his knees, raising them up to his shoulders in a momentary gesture of capitulation before he leaned back into his seat once more. His eyes crinkled in mirth, the first and earliest laugh lines visible between his mouth and his beard, and that profoundly hateful look of accidental disdain vanished into them. “Exactly! And yet I keep doing it! You're asking me to do it _right now!_ _While_ you criticize me about it! You _enormous purple hypocrite_.”

Coran looked between the two of them for a moment, then slowly sat down as well. Always quick to Alfor's defense; always slow to trust. It had always comforted Zarkon to know that someone like him had Alfor's back when Zarkon himself could not, and still would long after he was gone. He had never said as much in as many words, and probably never would. He and Coran did not like each other enough to have that conversation, and that was fine.

Alfor put a hand over his mouth, stifling the laugh and hiding the smile. “I'm sorry for doubting you, Zarkon. Your face just tells a different story, is all.”

“No. You are just bad at speaking Galra.”

Alfor scoffed. “That's what translators are for, old friend.”

“As ever, I must hope you are never without one.”

Coran cleared his throat, sitting up straighter. “ _I_ am a more than capable translator if something were to happen to King Alfor's or even my own device. Which it wouldn't. Because I maintain them.”

Zarkon lifted a finger from where his hand rest and dropped it again, a short gesture of acknowledgment.

“I suppose it's just the shock.” Alfor shrugged, holding one hand out and gesturing to Zarkon vaguely. “Seeing you...you know.”

“No, I do not.” Zarkon shifted faintly in his seat. He allowed his posture to loosen slightly, bringing his own hands together before him, and looked across the transport at Alfor's face earnestly. “Not all of this time has settled onto me since the Paladins last flew together. It has not been _that_ long.”

“Bit over a decaphoeb,” Coran said quietly.

“Even to a Galra, that is not so much time.”

“Yes, but Zarkon,” Alfor said, “it's different when we're in the armor with the visors. Last time I don't think we even saw each other out of the Lions--”

“I thought that we did.”

“No, I had to come back straightaway after everything was settled out. We had a little bit of a political snit I had to smooth over.”

Zarkon hummed faintly, deep in his chest, as he thought back. After a moment, he nodded slowly. “...It was Trigel and Gyrgan that I spoke to afterwards.” He chuffed a faint laugh. “I actually think that I may have seen Blaytz more recently than I have seen you in person. But there have still been calls.”

“You're always doing something else. I barely ever see you on a viewscreen, and it's always all purple light and weird shadows on your end. Besides, your signal is terrible. We...” Alfor stopped a minute, his brow furrowing, his frown deepening, and gestured vaguely again. “You know, we-- We never see each other any more, except when we're. You know. Voltronning about.”

The rise of Zarkon's brows was invisible beneath his helm. “Voltronning.”

“Yes.”

“That's a word now.” Rather than a question, he found his tone came out one of acceptance. He supposed that he had known Alfor for long enough that it was all that was left.

“Yes. That's what I said.”

“That's how we're using it. Voltron is a verb now.”

“There you go being dramatic again. You know what I mean.”

“I am no longer comfortable with you teaching my son things.”

Alfor cackled at him. They both looked back out the window as the transport slid between the tall, slender supports of an arch and into one of the many courtyard areas set into the high ground around the castle. Both it and the transport that followed after with the rest of his guard settled down in silence except for some faint, almost wistful sigh of sound. Outside, the juniberry flowers that had been brought down from the mountain fields were in full bloom across the grounds, the air strange and satiny with their spores.

“I miss the old days,” Alfor said quietly. He leaned his head against the window with a soft thunk, a subtle clink where his crown struck as well. “I love this peace that we've made. I love my wife and my daughter--I wouldn't trade any of it for anything. But I still miss when all of us could just run around having adventures for phoebs at a time, going to sleazy bars and boltholes off the back side of civilized space in between. Not give a damn when the old guard back home started railing about our crazy ideas. Laugh it all off. Just a band of scoundrels doing our best and to hell with anyone else.”

“We are still that, Alfor.” Zarkon stood. His guard rose in perfect time. He was proud to see it. “The entire universe could be our empire, and we would still be that. But even a scoundrel king cannot ignore his responsibilities if he expects to make the world he wants a reality.”

“Yeah.” Alfor snorted. “All right, _dad.”_

“Did your nanny never teach you not to mock a Galra?”

“Sure she did.” He grinned up at him. “For the same reason she taught me I ought to stay to the right neighborhoods or wash behind my ears. Got to play it straight or they'd eat me right up. Snap, snap.”

“You would hardly warrant _one_ snap, a scrawny thing like you.” He reached down and offered his hand. Alfor took it easily, readily. There was no tension there. There was no distrust. And why should there be? The tiny hand that had vanished between his own fingers could have crushed them just as easily. Snap, snap. He thought suddenly not of Alfor's hand in his but Honerva's. He let go. His throat ached but he could not tell if the pain came from within or without.

Alfor looked him up and down, frowning once more. “...Promise me you'll get some rest once you've checked on Lotor.”

 _A Galra soldier requires very little sleep,_ he almost said. But he knew how Alfor would respond. He would shoot Zarkon's own words back at him: there is more than one way to be tired. There is more than one way to rest. And what could Zarkon say to deny what was true? He kept his mouth shut for a moment, running his tongue over the backs of his teeth. He thought of Honerva, Honerva in her lab, and how many times he had asked her to make the same promise for different reasons. Once this test is run. Once this experiment is finished. Once this sample is secured. From where the transport had landed in the courtyard, he could see a fountain. His eyes told him that it was not the one she had asked him to replicate for her in the Imperial Hall of Daibazaal. His eyes told him that it looked nothing like it. But it reminded him anyway. It felt suddenly as though everything around him conspired to remind him, every sensory input, from the sweet, faintly soapy scent of the Altean bodies in the closed space to the subtle hum of their technology all around him to the feeling of the small hand in his, _snap snap;_ he was tired, his head throbbed, his throat was a ring of tightening fire.

“Zarkon?”

“Of course.” The door of the transport opened, letting in the sharp smell of water and the sickly sweet miasma of juniberry spores, the distant sound of young voices carried across the grounds. Zarkon was left with the ugly certainty that it had done so only because he agreed to what Alfor _(demanded)_ asked of him.

He took in Alfor's worried, somehow expectant stare up at him. Perhaps it was so. But sometimes, was it not necessary to demand that loved ones care for themselves? After this test. After this experiment. After this mission. After you see your son. Who knew this truth better than him? There was no malice between them. The wounds were all old: dark waters from dark dreams from darker waters still, all long gone by. Alfor had no more to desire to control him than he had to burn out the sun. He never had, no matter what ugly doubts sometimes dripped and slithered through Zarkon's mind, and he never would. Zarkon smiled faintly, fondly, reassuring, and put his hand over Alfor's small shoulder. “You have told me yourself that he is fine. Once have I seen him, I promise you--I am more than ready to rest.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'I want a fic that focuses on Allura and young Lotor' I say, as I focus the opening chapters on their fathers. I'M SORRY.


	3. 2

**2**

The classroom that Alfor took him to, in one of the many bright, soaringly curved buildings set about the grounds, contained only one student.

There was no reason for it to contain only one student. It was both wide and enormously tall. The study console at the center had seating for at least half a dozen, with lecture seating in tiers around the curved walls for larger classes. And yet, one single, small child sat at the console, diligently working at some assignment or another, with one tutor seated at the bench beside them bearing both a cup of tea and a bored, long-suffering expression Zarkon had found common to so many Alteans. Zarkon frowned to see it as much as at the vastly empty space and the piercing, overbearing brightness of the room's fixtures.

Alfor had told him that Lotor was still attending his lessons—and so Zarkon had fully expected that if he saw his son at this time of the quintant, it would be in that setting. And he had fully expected that if he were to see his son at his lessons, it would be with a group of other children. Almost certainly all Alteans of high birth, here in the Sacreds' Complex so near the castle, but he still knew that like Galra the Alteans did not isolate their children. It had been among one of the foremost reasons that Zarkon had allowed Lotor to go to Altea for his schooling to begin with: Lotor had been born, like most crosses outside of their own species, very large for a Galra. But he had been born very soft and damaged for a Galra as well; he had come without claws or teeth, with a heartbeat that stuttered and skipped. He healed quickly, but not as Galra children healed. He grew quickly, but not as Galra children grew. Zarkon would have been lying if he ever said he would have done anything other than find a single _dayak_ to watch over him and sequester him away alone. Safe. Never to deny him his rightful lessons and trials, no. But his right to find his place among his peers? To grow up as a Galra did—as Zarkon himself had—with the _dayak_ s and the children and then to choose if he would come home again after? In his grief he would have thought no price was too high to keep even one of them; yes, even only one of them, if that was all that he could do. He had. He still did.

It had nearly broken him to let Lotor go so far for so long, to Altea especially, but he had made no protest on the understanding that it would be better for him. That it was what he wanted, yes, and what his mother would have wanted for him, certainly: there was no doubt of that (how deeply she would have scowled at Zarkon's thoughts of Galra child-clans and _dayak_ guardians!), but above all that he could be safe there without also being alone.

But here, there was only one student.

Zarkon's hands clenched at his side. He could feel not only the pressure but the sharpness of his own claws in his palm through the armored mesh. He began to turn. But before he could say anything to Alfor—certainly before he could muster anything to say that would not have been snapping or harsh or accusatory—the lone student turned instead, and all of the rage rushed out of his body, leaving him feeling small and briefly hollow.

Lotor was aging far too slowly for a Galra, or he would have started to put on some of his adolescent height, but far more quickly than any Altean. The wide eyes that looked back at him, briefly haunted and cautious, sat in a face that was always somehow both older and younger than Zarkon ever expected. Lotor slowly turned on the bench until he was facing the adults in the doorway, then carefully slid off of the bench. They regarded each other silently from across the room. With his faintly lavender skin and dark clothing—Zarkon felt a by now familiar pang of strangely mingled pain and pride to see his son still wearing the loose clothing of Galra youth in black and drab Galra red even here and now; stronger, perhaps, for being in the room with him and not worlds away—Lotor looked like a small and unimportant wound against the stark whites and chromes and pallid blues of the room. Something that would heal without a scar in short order and be forgotten. The suddenness of the thought, the certainty of it, left Zarkon reeling. Surely, Altea would swallow his son. How much longer until he too wore blue and white and colors so bright and saturated Zarkon would not be able to look at him without aching?

After what felt like entire eons, Lotor took a small, hesitant step forward. “Father?”

The hollow feeling cracked around the hesitation in Lotor's voice. The _fear._ He frowned deeply and strode forward into the room. “Lotor.”

“Zarkon,” Alfor spoke up from behind him, tone worried. “Not so aggressive, I told you, he's been jumpy--”

Zarkon ignored him. He reached up and tapped off his translator. That he knew the Altean language, that he kept it on for the most part out of habit, that they both knew this, even that he continued to speak it to Lotor, who knew the tongue better than that of his birthplace—none of these things mattered, or made the wordless statement less clear. He heard the sharp click of halted sound in Alfor's throat. “Lotor. Alfor told me that you needed me. So I came--”

Lotor took a step back.

Zarkon stopped. “Lotor?”

Alfor had told him that Lotor was well except for his nerves. The child was shaking, strange subtones of color shifting and rolling beneath the fragile pallor of his skin. The smell of fear came off of him in waves, heavy and cloying. His already large pupils were dilated, overwhelming the iris with a flat unreflective blue. Zarkon knew that his son did not have Galra eyes, but now they did not look Altean either; they did not look like anything, empty holes in a dim yellow field. The dullness of their glow said that he was not well, not well at all. Zarkon found himself wondering if Alfor had bothered to check his son's unsteady heart, but could not bring himself to ask it then and there, looking at his solemn, frightened child across a distance that seemed to grow by the moment.

One of Lotor's soft-soled shoes slid back another half-step. He turned his head slowly, almost as if in a dream, looking around the empty room with eyes that jerked around too quickly and erratically for the motion. One of his hands fluttered up protectively over his chest. “Is-- Is it really you, father?”

Zarkon's heavy brows drew inward. It should have felt like a strange question. It should have felt absurd. It filled him with a strange, slowly sinking sense of dread instead. “Yes. Of course.”

Lotor's hand clutched at the wide, loose collar of his clothing. Clutched at his chest? Zarkon's hand twitched upward. Another half step backwards. Lotor did not look at him. He was still looking around, slow movements of the head, rapid movements of the eye; looking for something he was afraid to find. “Do you promise?”

“I promise.” His eyes flicked to Lotor's teacher. The Altean had not moved from his place, though he had set his tea down on the side of the console. He looked infuriatingly unconcerned. He looked bored. Uninvolved. He looked as though he thought all of this were some kind of terrible inconvenience. Zarkon closed his hands again slowly, folding away the surprisingly strong urge to stride over and shake the man by his skull.

Lotor stepped back again. The backs of his legs struck the bench he had sat on. Zarkon forced his hands open again and slowly lowered himself to one knee down on the floor. He fixed his eyes on his son. The rest of them did not matter. “I came because you needed me. You are my child, and I love you.”

Lotor shook his head. “That's what the monster said, too.”

Zarkon froze. Behind him, he heard Alfor shift.

“Monster?” Alfor asked. “What monster, Lotor?”

Lotor said nothing. His eyes twitched back and forth across the room.

“There are no monsters here,” Zarkon assured him gently. Slowly, carefully, he reached up to unfasten his helm, and just as slowly and carefully he set it down on the floor beside himself. He looked across the open, empty room at his son and hoped that it was evenly. Hope that it offered some sense of comfort or security. “There is only me, and Alfor, and your _dayak_ \--”

“Tutor,” Alfor corrected very quietly, perhaps more in response to the Altean tutor's visible flinch at the word.

Zarkon ignored him. He held his empty hands open to his son, to show them to him, but did not reach out. “You do not have to come to me. You do not have to tell me. But Alfor told me that you asked for me, so I am here if you need me.”

For a moment, while Lotor stood there, still and trembling and staring with terribly blank, terribly dim eyes, Zarkon thought that he would back up even further. That he would crawl over or onto the bench, or huddle beneath it. He trembled the way that a hunted thing trembled when the wind swung around and it caught, suddenly, the scent of something moments before unseen, unscented, unsensed; a predator too close to escape from.

It was not the first time that Zarkon had seen such a look in the eyes of a young Galra on Altean soil. The realization rolled through him in a sick wave. He shifted his weight forward on his knee, armor creaking. He thought of the absent question that he had not meant to ask of Alfor in the transport, _will you teach that to my son,_ and he wondered, yes, if they _had_ taught that to his son in spite of Coran's outrage, and in what way; wondered just what they _were_ teaching his son; he wondered for the first time if his son had seen what monsters _did_ lurk on Altea, or once had. What terrible, ravenous shadows huddled just out of sight in the past.

His neck ached.

“Lotarious,” he said softly, mindful of the fact that he rarely used the name in full, mindful of the fact that as a Galra his child was not yet old enough for it to be appropriate he do so, not as the father and not in front of these who were not of Lotor's family; so softly and so slowly, carefully, feeling around the brittle memories of Honerva, not only the name she had chosen but the way she had frowned at the idea of child-clans and _dayak_ s, the way she had wanted an Altean son, the way he knew she would have wanted him named, wanted him loved, wanted him raised; feeling around the knowledge that what he said next would defy all of those things and the way that knowledge felt like the world crumbling beneath his feet, “do you want to come home?”

He heard Alfor draw in a short, sharp breath of surprise into the profound silence that fell after the question, and then hold it. It all but echoed around the room. Lotor stared at him. The tutor stared at him. Alfor was probably staring at him as well.

Lotor lurched forward. At first Zarkon thought that he was hurt, that it was his heart, even that some unseen force had grasped him, whole-bodied, and yanked him from his place huddled against the bench. But it was no spasm or seizure. Lotor continued forward, first jerking, then stumbling, then running to his father. He struck Zarkon's armor with a small and unimportant _clud_ of sound, clinging to him, fingers seeking the edges of metal plates and sliding off of them as he pressed his face into the hard unyielding surfaces, now not just crying but sobbing openly.

Zarkon's friends often lamented that he was impossible to surprise, but he could not have predicted this. He froze for a moment, hands half lifted, and then slowly and carefully lowered them to his son, one cupping him protectively around the back (not since Lotor's birth had he been so painfully aware of how fragile he was, how unarmored, as since he walked through the door into this hateful empty classroom). His other hand touched Lotor's head, stroking the straight white hair, the very tips of his claws ruffling it out of place. He bowed his head further, doubling over, fully enveloping Lotor as he gently bumped his forehead against the soft hair as well. “I am here,” he assured again, speaking Altean no longer. “And you do not have to be, if you no longer want this.”

Lotor uttered a strange, cracked sound. He stood on the tips of his toes in his soft-soled shoes and pressed his bare forehead against the armored plates of his father's skull, eyes squeezed tightly shut, until Zarkon gently put two fingers to his shoulder and pushed him back down to relieve the pressure.

It took him a moment to realize that Lotor's sobbing contained words.

He did not speak either Altean or Galra, but in his distress mixed both of his native tongues together, ugly and clotted. _These things are not meant to mix,_ Zarkon thought; an ugly thought, unbidden, unwelcome, unwanted; _they are not and never were._ “There was a monster,” he sobbed, “I saw her, father, but she wasn't, she _wasn't,_ it _wasn't_ mother it was a _monster_ and-- and she was-- she wanted to-- _father I saw her!_ ”

Zarkon gathered Lotor up against his chest, lifting him off of the floor to cradle him close. He bumped his head against him gently, over and over again, trying to comfort him (unable to help but wonder if his son, so long on Altea, even recognized it as a gesture of comfort). He offered no words of reassurance. They would have stuck in his throat around the tightening feeling of-- Not dread, no. Unease. Unreality. Helplessness. Nothing so defined or readily accepted as _dread._

Behind him, Alfor moved forward. Zarkon felt his hand on his back. “Zarkon? I can't-- He's completely incoherent to me, but it's more than he's said all quintant. Has he told you what's wrong? What happened?”

He shook his head.

When he was young and foolish, from not long before to not long after he had lost his tail, Zarkon had sometimes gone out to the desert cap alone. He no longer remembered why, only that the last time he did such a thing that he had fallen, and woken with hot sand in his eyes, in his mouth, in his ears, in his throat; caught between armor plate and skin. It had hurt, but the pain had been so spread out, so many pieces but so small, and the way it seemed to weigh him down had felt so much more imperative that it became easier to simply lie still beneath the sun and let the sand draw him deeper. Yes, he had known better—but the knowing, then, had seemed so unimportant. Later something had roused him (he no longer remembered what—later, they would tell him that it was a side effect, that it was lasting damage, that he would lose his dreams piecemeal forever after) and he had found his way home; heavy, dragging, tired. So tired. Later, he had become ill and sicked it out of his belly, pounds of it, full of blood and char shards and creeping things that had gnawed at him from within. Creeping things that had made sleep so much easier. So much more reasonable.

 _Did_ you _have any reaction to the event?_

No. No, surely the timing had been wrong for that. What he had seen and heard ( _thought_ that he had seen and _thought_ that he had heard, unreal even in the moment) was dark dreams from dark waters. And surely, it was not so strange for Lotor to also have such dark dreams—not here, on Altea, where history lurked in the shadows. It was reasonable. And yet he thought again of the desert eating his dreams. And yet he tasted it again: sand and char. And yet wanted to ask now, for the first time, holding his weeping son, what became of Alteans who did not go through their peoples' last rites. Whether they lingered on. Whether they haunted those they left behind.

Whether they became monsters.

Zarkon stood, lifting Lotor with him, cradling the boy gently in one arm. He picked his helm from the floor as he went. It felt important, somehow. When he turned towards the door again, he met Alfor's gaze—alarmed and concerned and infinitely understanding--and he asked none of it. He could see the thousand questions clamoring in Alfor's eyes and knew that he never would. “I would like to stay for a time, if that is all right. Until Lotor has decided.”

“As long as he needs.”

* * *

Lotor would not sleep alone. It occurred to Alfor belatedly that it meant he had probably not slept much at all for the entire time since the initial fit. Since the event. That they had overlapped could have been coincidence, and in fact, Alfor probably would have been inclined to chalk it up to that if not for the fact that not only he himself but also his daughter, and even the Red Lion herself, had all experienced some sort of...

Of _what,_ exactly?

It was something that Alfor had mulled over with no small frequency over the past phoeb, and that he now mulled over again, chewing on his lip absently, when Zarkon came to join him in his laboratory. Alfor looked up and over from the biological sample he had not really been paying attention to, and closed the notes that he had not really been writing in. Zarkon looked, if possible, even more old and tired than he had when he first arrived. Alfor wondered if it was the stark lighting of the workspace or simply an effect of Zarkon having spent the entire day and night both jetlagged and dealing with a distraught child.

“I'm surprised you made it out of there before the end of the spicolian movement.” Alfor took a moment to carefully pack the sample back into its containment. In reality, he was carefully composing his words. He settled for “How is he?”

“I left him with my honor guard,” Zarkon said simply, which was no kind of answer at all. Except, perhaps, that he could not imagine Zarkon having left Lotor's side if he was not at least doing better. Not the way he had looked earlier. Not the way he had looked holding him. Not the way he had asked if Lotor wanted to simply leave back to Daibazaal. Alfor bit back a very strong desire to ask if he had actually named his son something as aggressively Altean as _Lotarious,_ of all things—how archaic! How high imperial! How very drenched in everything that Zarkon had once espoused to despise in the old Altean culture; Lotarious, arbiter of form, Lotarious, engineer of worlds!--and then not even told him. Surely it was only a nickname. “He is exhausted. Galra are not meant to sleep alone.”

The container was not labeled. None of them were. Alfor had his own system of organization, and he kept all of it tidily in his head. He slid the clear container back among its fellows on a shelf. “You all seem so private all the time. I suppose that it never occurred to me.”

“I suppose not.” Zarkon knew better than to lean on anything in any space that Alfor worked in, but he was leaning anyway; not _on_ anything in particular but still leaning, keeled slightly to one side, one shoulder slumped. Alfor bit back, also, the urge to tell him that he did not need to wear armor here, that he was among friends. But he had learned better. Zarkon did not seem to think that Galra were meant to wear casual clothing, either. Alfor supposed he'd seen them do it rarely enough he had to wonder. He wondered, also, if Zarkon had slept at all, alone or not. It was far too easy to imagine him sitting up over his son all night. “But he has slept now. I would like to know though, Alfor, why he was alone to begin with.”

“Hmn? Well, you know, it's normal for young Alteans to have their own room, so I really just--”

“I do not mean to sleep, Alfor.”

Alfor paused. He turned and picked up his notebook, leafing through it. Archaic, yes, but it had been a gift and he found the texture weirdly pleasant. Later he would upload his notes into a proper database. “What do you mean, then?” he asked carefully.

Tired, yes, but no less sharp for it—Alfor could feel Zarkon's eyes on him even without looking up from his notes. There was a particular weight to it. If he hadn't known better he would have thought Zarkon had some kind of external presence to put behind his gaze. Very few Alteans, even the most capable of leveraging the weight of their life force, could feel as fully and overwhelmingly _present_ as Zarkon to him. He suspected few Alteans would have been as bold about it as Zarkon tended to be, either. “It is not normal for young Alteans to have their own tutors.”

Alfor pursed his lips. “It's not unheard of. Noble children in particular.” He had not turned to face Zarkon, but he felt Zarkon's eyes remain on him evenly. He had no doubt that if he _had_ turned his eyes back to Zarkon that they would have made eye contact immediately. When Zarkon did not respond, but simply continued to watch him—to _push against him_ with his eyes alone, Alfor finally sighed and shut his notebook again. He did so harder than he had meant to, and put it back down on the work station harder than he had meant to as well. “What. Just say it.”

“I have nothing to say.”

“Oh, don't _lie_ to me!” Alfor turned around quickly. Zarkon's expression was more neutral than he had expected. It was almost worse. “You've _always_ got something to say, Zarkon. Just because you like to keep your own counsel when you're not at home doesn't mean you don't. Half the time you tell me tell me 'never trust a Galra' I think that's got to be what you mean. Never trust that a Galra _hasn't got something to say about it_.”

Zarkon looked him up and down evenly. Alfor sighed and brought his hands up, running them through his hair. He wore it shorter than he had when he was younger—there was no ponytail any more—but his bangs where still long. He didn't know what he would have done if his hair hadn't been at least long enough to run his hands through when he was struggling with something. Started pulling on his beard, probably. “...I'm sorry. That came out more sharply than I meant it.”

“I doubt that very much,” Zarkon said quietly. He straightened himself up out of his somehow wounded lean. The motion of his arms suggested that he wanted to draw his cape around himself, but he was not wearing it. Alfor blinked a few times: he had not noticed it at first, but now that he had, it's absence seemed unavoidably strange and strangely distressing: he was not wearing either his cloak or his crown. Though he had seen Zarkon out of both many times, the lines of Zarkon's body without them but still in his armor were far more alien than they had any right to be. And then, suddenly, his tone almost thoughtful: “I am not trying to start a fight with you, Alfor.”

“Probably not.” Alfor set his back to his work table, planting his hands firmly on the flat surface behind him. “But you've got something you're ready to fight about, and I've got something I'm ready to fight about, and between the two of us we've got a lot of things to be upset about and none of them with faces we can yell at.”

“Allura?”

“She's all right,” Alfor said quickly. “Not nearly as bad as Lotor's been, certainly. She's not gone non-verbal or any such thing...just...she's been very quiet. Keeping to herself mostly. Taking it out on her training. I think she doesn't want to trouble anyone with whatever's troubling her.” He caught himself smiling a little, fond and rueful. “It's very considerate and very, _very_ frustrating. I've no idea where she gets it from.”

“The first from her mother, the second from her father.”

“Cute.”

Zarkon grunted faintly. He continued to watch Alfor with frustrating evenness. Alfor found he had no idea what the man was thinking. Oh, it was probably about Lotor, to be sure, or possibly Allura—but there had been a time where the idea that he could ever _not know_ what was going through Zarkon's head with absolute certainty at any given time, in specifics, would have been absurd to him; he would have laughed it off. Zarkon had, for lack of a better way to put it, _changed,_ and defining it in a more specific sense eluded him. It had not been sudden in any way, but happened over a period of time, a period of events. Such a gradual transformation should have been easy to track. It was intensely frustrating that it had not been.

He was waiting for an explanation still, Alfor was certain. But what, exactly, did Zarkon want him to say? Alfor had very much left the details of how Lotor's education to...well, to _educators,_ just as he had left his daughter's education to the same. Lotor grew more quickly than his peers, but was nonetheless more fragile; he could not participate in early combat education with them. Lotor struggled, physiologically, with the sounds of Altean language, though he grasped it perfectly well, and could not help but sound banal and uneducated no matter how hard he tried because of it. It was not hard for Alfor to imagine how brutally he must have been teased for all of this in the brief time that he had spent in normal classes: for his small sharp fangs and small sharp nails, for his odd yellow sclera and flat narrow pupils, for his purple skin and butterfly ears. That Lotor was every bit as bright as his peers would not matter to the children of people who had, in his own youth, taunted Honerva for her own awkward speech (for her straight dark hair that spoke of so much lower a birth, for her eyes which had been far too small for far too long, for every little imperfection; for her heritage, and she had not even been _half Galra,_ by the very stars, what had Zarkon _expected_ would happen?).

He swallowed a grimace. No, he could not very well say any of that, could he? He could not very well look Zarkon in the eye and say that he thought it was for the best that Lotor be a classroom of one for the boy's own sake, could he, let alone tell him that much of the nobility had expressed concerns about their children being left alone with a Galra child, who might, after all, retaliate with violence to all their needling?

That he could not help the part of him that thought that they were _right?_

After what felt like a very uncomfortably long time but was probably not, Alfor looked away from Zarkon. He was obvious about it: he tipped his head back to look at the ceiling with a sigh. “It's for the best that he was alone when it happened. According to Caylan—his tutor, that is—the entire fit was more than a little disturbing. Apparently he started screaming out of nowhere. Broke a study tablet, hid himself under his bench console. They hadn't ever even heard little Lotor raise his voice before that. He's usually such a quiet boy—well, not as quiet as lately. You know.” Alfor paused. It was good enough, he decided; none of the lurid details should have been necessary. The feral terror. The fact that Lotor had not only screamed like a cornered animal but scratched and even bitten Caylan in his panic when the instructor had attempted to retrieve him from his hiding place. And certainly not that Lotor had vindicated every one of those highborn parents and their fears and scandalized murmurs about some half-bred Galra barbarian sharing space with their dear children. Certainly not that finding a tutor to continue to sit with Lotor in the aftermath of Caylan's injuries had taken an act of royal arm-twisting on his behalf. Every bit of _that_ was, in this situation, completely unnecessary information. “I can't imagine anyone would have given him an easy time after that. You know how cruel children can be.”

Zarkon made a faint sound. “I do not. Galra children are not cruel.”

Alfor laughed. “Highly doubtful, my friend. Perhaps you simply had an easy childhood.”

“Perhaps Alteans are simply cruel of nature.”

“Perhaps.” Alfor rolled his shoulders, continuing to look at the ceiling. He did not know what the look on Zarkon's face was when he said it. He did not want to. “But I know you don't believe that.”

“No?”

“No. I should think that if you did, you wouldn't like us half as much.”

Zarkon said nothing. The longer the silence stretched out the more brittle and unpleasant it felt. Alfor closed his eyes up at the ceiling and tried to will his friend to speak, all in vain.

“...Well,” Alfor said at last, not wanting to let the bloated silence grow between them any longer, “did Lotor tell you what happened? As I said before, he's been non-verbal since it happened. So up until he said something about a-- a _monster?_ A monster, just yesterday...” He shifted slightly against the work table and lowered his head to look at Zarkon. “I want to clarify that no monsters whatsoever were reported in the area by his tutor or anyone else at the time.”

Finally, Zarkon's bland expression changed: his brows shifted, and he snorted softly. It was not quite a laugh or a smile, but it was better than the strange and unexpressed _thing_ that had been hanging between them. Alfor smiled back at him and waved a hand. “And Zarkon, if you're going to be in here dim the lights. You must have such a headache right now.”

“This is fine. I have no intention of disrupting your work.”

 _I wasn't really working,_ he almost said. Instead, Alfor shrugged. “Have it your way.”

“I am used to Altean lighting by now.”

That gave Alfor a little bit more pause. The few times that he had visited them while she was still alive, Alfor had found Honerva's facilities with the Galra to be unbearably dark, both in the sense of poor lighting and in the sense of being unconscionably dreary. Honerva had gone so native on Daibazaal that she had not only been given a Galra funeral but had specifically not requested but _demanded_ that no Altean rites or traditions be observed for her death. Towards the end, even she had responded to bright light with the characteristic Galra squint, so used to their dimmer tolerances had she become. Everyone had had a great laugh about it back on Altea and when she wasn't around, of course. On the surface it had been hilarious. Just below, and in hindsight, it had always made Alfor uncomfortable.

“...When did that happen?” he asked at last. “It's been so long since you spent any real time here.”

“ _E to vedo, e to veta,”_ Zarkon said philosophically, holding up one finger. Alfor was familiar with the specific air: a strangely emphatic tone that was good at fooling the translator's allowance for proper nouns which he often pulled around himself like a second cloak whenever he felt like quoting Galra sayings and anecdotes. He seemed to feel like quoting Galra sayings and anecdotes very rarely, except for literally any time he did not want to directly answer something, whether because he did not have an answer or he did not feel like sharing it. When they had all been a little bit younger, he had often used it to drop puns into conversations unexpectedly, odd bombs brought quite effectively to target in no small part by his perpetually, terribly serious tone and expressions. Blaytz was incapable of hearing one without laughing.

He'd missed it more than he thought.

“So what's that one mean?”

“'If it is known, it is so.'”

“I hate it. It makes no sense.”

“Because it is simple, and Alteans have always preferred that things be complicated.”

“Because it's stupid.” He waved a hand. Zarkon was always ready to tell him how very complicated Alteans were. It was an easy argument to hide behind; he knew it as surely as he knew that it was what Zarkon was doing with it now. “Did he tell you what happened? You're-- It's not like you. You're avoiding the subject.”

“No,” Zarkon said. “I am still turning it over myself.”

Which meant that he had, and Zarkon simply did not want to share it with him for whatever reason. Immediately, Alfor found himself feeling defensive about it, and wondered if Zarkon would be more inclined to share whatever Lotor might have told him if Alfor shared his own experience. He tapped his fingers on the work table behind him in thoughtful patterns. “Well. A few people experienced _something_ at the same time it all happened. Probably all of the odd electromagnetics and quintessence ripples and all of that. Those sorts of things can have a very strong effect on people, you know.”

“Yes, I do. My people are particularly vulnerable to quintessence exposure.” Zarkon's gaze across the room suddenly felt uncomfortably pointed and even again. “Which is why I have been so needed at home. But Lotor should not be as vulnerable as...”

He watched Zarkon stumble over the sentence, watched his hands open and close as if fumbling for the words or a way to say them. The helplessness in the simple gesture was immense. Alfor hated it. He hated it more than almost anything. The nostalgia for older times, simpler times (as if to spite Zarkon entirely) hit him like a piston to the chest. Zarkon, who was always sweeping in to save the day with just the right thing to say, just the right plan or strategy, always sweeping in to save Alfor from charging too far or too fast, should never have looked so helpless. He should never have _been_ so helpless, because Alfor knew, suddenly and with absolute certainty, that the words that Zarkon would settle on were _not as vulnerable as_ _ **me**_ _,_ and the worst part of it would be that it would be true.

He swallowed it and tried to smile as he studied Zarkon's face, the new pits and lines and shadows trying to sneak out of it and into view, the way that Zarkon had told him not all of it had come between the last time they saw each other and now. He wondered if it was true and he wondered, too, if it mattered; he wondered if perhaps he should ask Zarkon to stay even a little longer than Lotor needed to make his decision. He wondered if he should not insist that Zarkon not go home to Daibazaal at all until after he had been examined. But of course, would Galra medics not have also examined him already? Of course they would. They had always been so proud of their doctors. “He shouldn't be as vulnerable as all that,” Alfor agreed with what felt like a cloying brightness, refusing the hateful words he was certain would have come. “But, as I said, people on Altea also had experiences during the event, so it's not completely unreasonable to think that if Allura could have one Lotor could too. He's not as well trained as she is, you know.”

“He is still young,” Zarkon said quietly (and, did Alfor's ears deceive him, perhaps a bit gratefully?). “Give him time. He will be as great an alchemist as Allura or any other.”

“She's not actually training to be an alchemist, you know. She only has the standard, basic education as far as that goes.” Alfor could not stop the faint note of petulance that crept into his voice. “I know that's not _why_ she had a fit when it happened, we certainly had at least one trained and certified alchemist who had one. But she's much more interested in her combat training. She wants to be a warrior. Like her mother.”

“With examples like us, Alfor, you can hardly blame our children for wanting to follow in their mothers' footsteps instead.”

“Oh, I don't know. She certainly can't wait to take over the Red Lion from me...provided she can't get the Black one from you, anyway.”

“That is not her choice to make.”

Alfor shrugged. His fingers tightened on the table.

Zarkon tilted his head faintly, watching him carefully. “...You said that she was also affected. Did Allura tell you what happened?”

Alfor quieted. His fingers drummed on the worktable behind him—never random, no matter how hard he tried; always falling into some kind of form and pattern eventually. “...You mean for her? During the whole...event?”

Zarkon nodded.

Alfor let out a long, slow sigh. He looked down instead of up this time. “...You didn't hear anything about this, at least not from me, if it comes up with her, all right? I'm sure if you know about it she wants to be the one to tell you.”

“If that is the case, I can simply ask her myself.”

“All right.” And for a moment he left it at that, and was more than happy to leave it at that. But in his mind's eye he could still clearly see Allura's face, paled and drawn, her eyes haunted by what she had seen; the thin pink glimmer of blood on her mouth and chin where she had bitten through her lip, her eyes somehow older than before. He could still hear Lotor's voice, sharp and babbling and full of fear as he clung to Zarkon; he could still hear the word that had come once and then again, _monster_ , _that's what the monster said._ He remembered looking up at the Red Lion and being struck, suddenly, by how much of a monster he had made of her and her sisters; not only in the things that they had done and would surely someday do (that he, suddenly and briefly, _saw_ them do) but in the way that he had made them, deadly constructs depending so utterly on small and terrible wandering hearts; such small and selfish scoundrel hearts.

“Zarkon...I'm serious. What did Lotor tell you about his fit?”

Zarkon looked him over considerately. “Are you compiling data for the studies?”

“No. I'm worried about our children.”

Zarkon nodded again, and Alfor was suddenly very aware that had he given any other answer, Zarkon would have walked out of the room. It was intensely frustrating. What if he _had_ been, then? Would it kill Zarkon to contribute to a damn study without having already had all of his own people carry out their own behind closed doors first for a change? The ships were one thing but this—this affected everyone, _had_ affected everyone, in ways they were still trying to compile enough information to understand, and any information could still be important. Did he not understand that that was what having an alliance was about? He swallowed the resentment.

Zarkon did not walk out of the room. He stood there, straight and rigid as if giving a formal speech, except for where his hands had folded in front of him, one thumb claw sliding back and forth over a curve of armor on the other hand. “He said that he saw his mother,” he said at last, abruptly, tone as stiff as his back “Or rather that. That Honerva appeared to come to see him, even though he knew that she was dead.”

Alfor remained silent. His hands stilled on the work table. He watched Zarkon carefully. The claw was not sliding on the armor. It was digging. He thought about telling Zarkon that he was the one who looked like he'd seen a ghost and decided against it just as quickly.

“He said that even though she told him she was safe, she tried to... that she tried to hurt him. That it was not really her, of course--”

“Of course,” Alfor said softly. As reassuringly as he could. He kept watching Zarkon dig at his own armor with one nail and wondered if Zarkon even noticed that he was doing it. Absent motion was unlike him. The slightly ragged edge in his tone was unlike him. “It was a monster.”

“Yes. A monster that looked like her. Stole her appearance. He said that it tried to--” He rolled his shoulders heavily. It looked less as though he were shrugging something off and more as though he were preparing to wade into a pitched battle—how many times had he seen the motion used that way? More than he could count—and it occurred to him suddenly that however shaken he might be by it, that Zarkon hated this thing far more; this imaginary monster who had dared to steal Honerva's face in his son's mind. That if it were a physical thing he would have torn it apart just for that and nothing more. Not for frightening his son, though surely there was some of that there as well, or even for frightening him, but for the simple crime of wearing a face— _that_ face—that did not belong to it at all. It was strange and strangely unsettling and, in an absent sort of way, funny; which felt somehow unsettling in itself. “I don't suppose you've heard of any other 'reactions' like that?”

“Well, Allura said she saw what looked like Voltron and some other enormous machine ripping holes in the sky. But of course, no such weapon as she described exists, and all the Lions are accounted for at the time.” Alfor straightened up, stepping away from the worktable altogether. “It tried to what, Zarkon?”

He did not like the way that Zarkon's teeth showed. The expression was not a smile but made him think uncomfortably, instead, of (his own tutor, long ago, warning him ' _the Galra are beasts; they are animals, my prince; they will bite the hand that lays careless_ ) a man backed into a corner, with no recourse left but to die either quietly or fighting. Somehow both fearful and fearsome at once.

He thought again of the Red Lion and the small, terrible heart he had chained her to. He wondered again, as he had many times before, always without asking (without _daring_ to ask, perhaps, and perhaps here and now, if not later looking back, he could admit that to himself) how it was the Black Lion functioned when the heart he locked her to had no chains at all. From where did her lifeblood come? What did Zarkon give her, when Zarkon himself had nothing to give?

“He said that it tried to eat him.” His voice flat. “So it could eat the sky. Isn't that funny.”

Alfor did not laugh either. He thought instead of the Lions. Of the Black Lion, whose wings tore the sky. Who he had forced to feed herself on the life of one who should have long since died. A monster he himself had made: no more and no less. “Hilarious.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear to god the next chapter has more of the kids in it. Allura even! I just really enjoy writing the dads.


	4. 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the parenthetical and indent formatting in my actual document is absolutely wonkerballs in a way I was rather proud of during the last scene but, haha, it's been so long since I posted any real volume of fanfic I completely forgot there's not a way to really translate that. WHOOPS. I did what I could with blockquote.

**3**

The training room echoed with the sound of metal on metal. Heavy breathing scraped under it coarsely, punctuated by the thump of footfalls. The indicator lights by the enclosed viewing box situated above the vast, pale room would have informed observers, had there been any, that all safety protocols for the Gladiator drone were disengaged. Had there been any, those same observers most likely would have found this to be excessive for an unscheduled and ungraded training session. Had there been any, Princess Allura most likely would have told them to kindly shove off.

The Gladiator was designed to withstand abuse. Its white curves and gold bezels and ridges remained smooth and unmarred in spite of the beating it had taken during previous rounds of combat. The single staring light on the unmarked ovoid of its face, usually bright blue, was instead a bland, insistent shade of red. She stared back at it with narrowed eyes, vision fuzzy at the edges with lack of sleep but just as unblinking. Her training armor had been scuffed and dented in several places by the Gladiator's blunt rod weapon. It was designed to hurt badly but do no real damage. It filled both purposes admirably but she had been taught that anything, no matter how safe or harmless, could render a killing stroke, for the real danger of a weapon lay not in form but intent.

Allura shifted the handle of her weapon as she moved, safely out of range, off-hand brushing a loose bit of curly white hair from her face. She wore her hair too long and she knew it; before her schooling was finished, she would have to cut it short for training. For now most was pulled back into a tight alchemists' braid and then coiled up onto the back of her head, pinned there firmly enough not to be disrupted by all but the most pointed of efforts, but here and there the odd wisp had made its way free. She was nearly a full adult—only a few cascades from it; just a handful of decaphoebs, perhaps a decat at most—and she would not be beaten by this machine.

She darted forward and struck out at the Gladiator, which rolled easily under the strike. The rod came up. Allura used the opening to step back. The Gladiator followed. On and on, around and around the training room, no shadows to chase them in the pervasive light. Had there been any observers, from the outside the movements would have looked quick and sharp, unpredictable, but within they were practiced and dreamy, almost a dance; strictly structured and regimented. Allura had been training with the Gladiator since she was old enough to grasp a weapon, studying it even longer, and she knew the way that it was programmed to move in response to every new situation or counter-motion. The tactics of the greatest Altean warriors had been uploaded into it, and only the most pointed of efforts could have disrupted them. Here, there were no stray strands or threads.

Today Allura's weapon was not one used by any of the great Altean warriors but a chain-sword, a weapon more effective as a whip than a blade, best suited to disarming and entangling and the moment of flat-footed surprised at the first moment when it showed its true face. The Gladiator had not been surprised. It was a weapon that many Altean warriors knew how to counter by long practice, one that posed little danger to Altean armor. The Gladiator moved against her accordingly, never allowing her the space to properly use the weapon's strengths, pressing in close every time she moved away, but rarely close enough for the reach of its shorter, locked form and never shying from being struck. She had not been taught to use the weapon here or by her tutors but by Zarkon, who had insisted that if she must train for combat so young she be well-versed in whatever should come to hand. Had there been observers, they would have frowned to see it in her hands. She liked to think that he would have been proud, but though she knew he had come to Altea, he had not yet come to see her.

She did not hold this against him.

The Gladiator moved in on her again. The rod came down. She brought the sword up in a block, grasped the end of the blade with her free hand quickly, and unlocked it. The blade strained against the training gloves, trying to bite into her palm. Her hands twisted, then pulled it tight. The rod was caught in the tangle of angled blade sections as she dropped down to the floor and then slid between her opponent's feet, dragging the end of the rod with her. A flesh and blood opponent might have released their weapon into the chain to keep the action from breaking up their stance. The Gladiator adapted instead, releasing with one hand and twisting up and off to the side from Allura's low leg-sweeping strike before grasping the weapon with both hands again. Its weight drove the rod down, pinning the chain-sword around it, its own ridges preventing it from being locked closed again; the Gladiator's strength, made to compete against mature Alteans far stronger than Allura herself or any Galra, preventing the weapon from being pulled out from beneath it. All structured. All programmed. All steps to the dance.

 _'And then what do you do?'_ Zarkon had once patiently asked her, so much younger then, still just a child. Everything about him had seemed so impossibly large then; him, his hands guiding hers through the motions, his weapons when he showed her for himself, his eyes as they settled on her. She had still thought that someday she would be so large as well. It had still seemed that she was the only child he would ever have, whether by blood or not. She had still been small enough to wear the helm that he had given her at her birth, if only barely. When he came to Altea, as often as it was for matters of Voltron and the coalition, it had still felt just as much to come to see her. Her smallness, confirmed and compounded by him, had been a comfort.

She did not hold this against anyone.

She knew better than to try to tug the weapon free, or attempt to pull the rod out from beneath the Gladiator's weight. These were the kinds of things that it had been made to account for, and she had lost fights against it in the past by doing them. She knew not to stay as she was, for the Gladiator was already swinging its weight back to the ground, one foot forward, for a blow to her head while she was down.

The light turned blue.

The change was so sudden and alarming that in her shock Allura did not roll out from under the Gladiator's downward strike, as she had meant to. The metal heel slammed into the ground right beside her head so hard she felt it vibrate through the floor beneath her, the sound ringing in her ear, and she blinked up at it instead. The Gladiator straightened, lifting its weapon to the passive position before the light went out entirely. A hole in the floor only just large enough for it to pass through opened up briefly beneath it, swallowing it into the absolute darkness beneath the training deck as if it had never been there at all.

“Just--” Allura remained on the floor for a moment, chest heaving. Beneath the protection of her training armor, the spiracles along her sides opened in a reflexive, gasping wave. She waited to catch her breath, then rolled herself up to a seated position with a huff, snatching her fallen weapon up and voice rising quickly. “Just who do you think you are, interrupting--”

It was Queen Melenor who stood in the doorway of the training hall, the subtle glow of her loose white hair in the bright lights framing her like a holy aura, one hand on the controls. Her expression was neither troubled nor impressed. The neutrality was deafening.

Allura scrambled to her feet, feeling heat rise in her face that had nothing to do with her exertions. “Mother.”

Her mother smiled thinly, lips pressed tight. “We've talked about this, Allura.”

“I know.”

“I am going to have to revoke your settings clearance again.”

“No, of course you won't--” One of Melenor's fine white brows rose. Allura's protest ground to a halt, her face reddening further, as she realized it had not been a question or suggestion. “...I'm sorry, mother.”

“I only just gave it back to you.” Melenor held out one of her hands. Dutifully, ears still ringing, Allura crossed the training floor and took it. Her mother used it to pull her in nearer, turning her about and wrapping the arm around her, so her own arm crossed her chest as she was nestled into the crook of Melenor's, battered training armor against the smooth finish of fabric sleeve. Pink, for a warrior. Pink for the fallen. Nearly a full adult, Allura was not yet old enough to wear it. “It isn't like you to train so recklessly.”

“No, mother,” she agreed. She wanted to release her mother's hand. Not because the position caged her in place, though it did, and not because she did not appreciate the contact, because she did, but because she could not help but be aware of the way her mother's last remaining callouses fit against the training glove, and the places Allura's own fresher callouses hid beneath them.

“A warrior should never train recklessly.”

The desire to sink down into herself was profound. Her mother had been a strong warrior once, and she knew this. But she had never lived with that reality, only its echo: pink dresses and scars and faded callouses on the fingers that brushed through her hair or nestled against her own; a seat of honor at memorial events, where Alfor and Allura could not join her but only watch; a ragged line of crushed vents and ridges down her side from armpit to hip, spiracles shattered closed, which Allura had seen, once, before being noticed and ushered from the dressing room. She was the same height as her mother, and might yet become taller; her form was as strong, and as she continued to train would yet become stronger. Still she felt small, confirmed and compounded by what remained. There was no comfort there: it filled her instead with a profound unpleasantness she could not have expressed fully if asked to, which she could hold against no one and nothing except perhaps herself. “No, mother.”

Melenor looked at her evenly a moment longer, and then leaned in to kiss her temple. Allura made a face, eyes squinting shut and nose scrunching up and trying with every fiber of her being not to try to squirm away, not from the kiss but from the feeling, tightening, compressing around her with every moment. “Are you ready to tell me what's wrong?”

She must have been asked at least a thousand times by a thousand people over the past phoeb what was troubling her—by her mother and father most often of all, with Coran following closely after. Allura had been told many times growing up that in addition to her mother and father, there had been no fewer than three sparklighters for her before she was born. No one had ever given her any names, but she was certain that however little Coran might have had to offer, as much like a parent as he fussed he must have been one of them. “No, mother. If that's all right.”

Melenor sighed. “Of course.” Not disappointed—simply resigned. Somehow that was worse, and Allura could almost feel herself becoming smaller, shoulders drawing in away from the soft squeeze her mother offered. Some kind of comfort or assurance. There was still iron there, for all that it was gentle; there was always still iron in Melenor's hands, in her shoulders, in the set of her back. Allura wondered how must stronger it must have been _(somewhere else)_ before time and carrying a child of strong quintessence to term had taken their toll on her. In another _(place)_ life, perhaps,

_(somewhere out beyond the holes in the sky)_

where none of it had ever happened.

Allura closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips to her forehead, frowning deeply.

“Allura?”

“I'm fine, mother. Please don't worry.”

There _were_ no holes in the sky. She had seen them, but she knew that there were none, and there never had been. How would they have gotten there? She had seen them made, yes, or thought she had, but the facts were that Voltron had been in her component parts, each Lion separate and accounted for. The other mechanism did not exist. And so, there were no holes in the sky. There was a hole in her lip that would not quite heal, a hole in her memory that would not quite resolve, a pain that throbbed like a hole in her heart; but there were no holes in the sky.

And there had been nothing beyond them, nothing at all, when there were.

“You understand why I do?”

She kept her eyes closed. “Yes, mother. But there's no need.”

“Because I know that you know better than to train recklessly. And yet I have already had to revoke your clearance twice this phoeb. ”

 _No, mother_ hung on the tip of her tongue like a mantra as she opened her eyes, peering up at her mother from beneath the shadows of her fingers. She bit down on it lightly, but still physically. “...Did you ever?” Her teeth moved to the groove in her lip, only a phoeb old, almost by instinct. She hated it immediately. “Train recklessly, I mean. When you were my age, or-- or ever.”

And it seemed absurd, it seemed impossible—as impossible as holes in the sky, perhaps—because this was Queen Melenor, this was her _mother,_ always collected, always serene; a pillar of order all silk and iron, and for a very long moment her regard, so ceaselessly and utterly neutral, seemed only to agree.

Her eyes crinkled slightly at the corners, laugh lines bunching up very faintly, making her look as old as she was and no older. She squeezed Allura's hand again, and then released her. “All the time, my dear. Every chance that I had. It is exactly why I know to worry about it so.”

Allura remained quiet for a moment, but did not pull away. The answer should have felt reassuring, perhaps. It felt like a betrayal instead. “You sound like father.”

“We've been married long enough for it.” She turned to face Allura fully and gave her a brief look-over that was at once critical and fond. After a moment she reached up and guided Allura's hands away from her face, then once again tucked an errant strand of hair back into place behind Allura's ear. “But all parents say such things. 'Do as I say, not as I have done'. We say it because in having done these things, we know their lessons, and are perfectly capable of passing them on ourselves. It is better to learn from the follies of others than to follow them into folly, now, isn't it?”

“Yes, mother.” She knew that it was true, but the agreement rang hollow somehow. She could not imagine her mother in dented practice armor, her hair in disarray, an alien weapon in her hand; her mother, cheeks flushed with shame and exertion as she was told she would lose her settings clearance yet _again_. She could not imagine what folly her mother might have found in the training room or anywhere else. Her mother who wore pink for those who had fallen, because her mother, in the face of everything, had not.

“Come and clean up for dinner.”

Allura blinked slowly. “Is it that late already?”

Melenor smiled at her, patient and even, and brushed at Allura's shoulder as if her hand could remove the scratches from the material there. Her fingers gently tapped at Allura's jawline, and she straightened under the touch without thinking; as instinctive as her motions with the Gladiator before. “You get so lost in your training.”

“I'm sorry, mother.”

“There's nothing really wrong with it, as long as you grow out of it. But our guests have been here an entire spicolian movement now, and I thought it might be nice if they were to join us this time, since Lotor is doing so much better.” The hand moved to Allura's hair again. At this point it felt like fussing--perhaps trying to tell her without so many words that she wore it too long. She wore it the way the way that her mother did now, but not, she knew, the way that it had once been. “So I'd like you to do a bit more cleaning up than you would for just your father and I.”

She started to ask about Lotor. Instead, the corner of Allura's mouth twitched up a bit, even as her ears twitched downward faintly. “Uncle Zarkon will hardly require me to dress for dinner--”

“But your mother Melenor would like you to.” She paused, and her smile softened faintly. “...When you were small you used to call to him 'Papa Zarkon'. Do you remember that?”

She did, and less distantly than her mother's tone or far-off look—perhaps remembering and even longing for those phoebs now past, and the daughter who had not yet learned to train recklessly in them. She had stopped because her father had asked her to, not once but twice. The first time had felt almost like an afterthought, but the way that he had flinched, the way his laughter had flinched, awkward and halting and glassy, when young Allura asked if Zarkon or Honerva had been among her sparklighters was the reason she had never asked after any others (even Coran, who seemed so obvious, because at the time hadn't _they_?).

The second time had been Honerva's remembrance ceremony. Her father had not laughed or looked at her but gripped her shoulders like a vise and stared to some point unseen through her face. _'Please don't do that to him',_ he had said, brittle and stiff and cracked. Lotor had still been small and new, lost in his medical supports and clutched against Zarkon's funeral armor like a pale gouge in the metal through which he must surely have been bleeding out to look so worn. A wound he wanted no one else to judge him by. _'Please don't do that to either of them'._ But Zarkon had bent to hold her as well and pressed his head against hers as if she _was_ his child as well, by blood or not, and no one else in that awful dim room had looked on him, perhaps ashamed and perhaps judging him by the wounds while he wept because Galra, after all, were supposed to remember and celebrate and honor but not to mourn. Never to mourn. It had been as raw and monstrous and strange in his eyes as the yellow hole torn in Daibazaal's red moon, and she had not called him Papa then not because her father had asked her, even begged her, but because in that terrible moment he had not looked like her Papa at all, not like anyone she knew or had ever known, or should ever care to, and who could she blame for that? Who could she hold that against? She wondered sometimes if it was why he did not stop to see her when he came to Altea any more; some perception of familiarity revoked.

“No, mother,” she said, and stepped away. “I can't say that I do.” Who would want to? Her father had taught her that everyone had moments they wanted to forget. She couldn't imagine that it wasn't something her mother understood as well. “...Is it true that Lotor might be leaving soon?”

The edges of Melenor's smile tightened faintly. Her hands folded together in front of her, low and neutral once more. Allura could see the places her armor had disrupted the threads of her mother's sleeves and hated every one of them. “Where did you hear that?”

“Just...” She waved her free hand vaguely, not wanting to implicate any of the castle staff. “people talking.”

“You know better than to listen to gossip, Allura. It doesn't become a princess to do so.”

“No, mother.” _But is it true?_ The question burned on the tip of her tongue. She bit down on it again, hard enough to taste blood this time, trying to swallow the words before they came out.

Something of it must have shown through on her face. Melenor's expression softened. “Of course not. Zarkon loves Lotor very much—he will always endeavor to do what's best for him. You know that.”

She turned away quickly, swallowing hard and lifting a hand to her mouth in case the blood should show. “Yes, mother.”

There was a pause behind her. Allura felt Melenor move forward more than heard her. “Are you _sure_ that you're all right?”

“Yes, mother.” No, mother. There on the tip of her tongue. But it could have been true. Was that it, after all? Was it simply that she was worried about Lotor—his furtive silence, the uneasy crawl of color his skin had taken on, the way his eyes seemed to dim by the quintant—and the rumors that had begun to move about him? People did talk, certainly. They had talked about his screaming and how he had bitten his tutor like a beast as eagerly as they now talked of Zarkon dismissing Alfor on the academy grounds and inviting him home. Every time she looked at him for the past phoeb she felt so interminably and unbearably sad, though she could not have said why or what was to blame. He was just a child. Maybe she felt sad because it seemed wrong that someone so new and innocent should seem so hunted.

Or that some part of that hunt should feel so grossly inevitable.

Another pause, almost hesitant. Allura hated it. Hated to hear her mother hesitate over anything; hated to think that it was her fault in some way; hated to know that she could hold it against no one but herself. The way that Melenor touched her shoulder from behind was almost timid. “And you would tell me if you weren't?”

“Yes, mother. I'll go and clean up now.”

The careful touch remained for just one moment more, and then withdrew. “Remember to rack your weapon before you go this time, please.”

“Yes, mother.”

* * *

Assuming they were all ready to sit down and have dinner together might have been premature.

Zarkon had sat at the dining table of the Altean castle with them before, of course, but it had been a long time since he had done it at all, and longer still since he had sat there and not been ushered to its head by Alfor as the Black Paladin. It was strange for Allura to see him seated there along the sides of the long table as a guest instead, and without Alfor and Trigel bracketing him, arguing goodnaturedly around his stoic bulk like small birds about a boulder. Now it was Galra house armor that he wore, murky with reds and greys, not an Altean flight suit in crisp black and white; now it was children who bracketed him, one nearly grown but both quiet and impossibly dwarfed, not his laughing comrades in arms. Allura had never sat beside him at such a table.

There _was_ some kind of formality to the meal, though Allura could not have said what; only it was not, whatever anyone might have wanted to imply, simply a family dinner. Her mother had not asked her to dress for nothing; there was a tension in the air, strange and brittle as the sounds of scraping silverware. At a family dinner they all might have sat anywhere at all, and Coran (and so, perhaps, the honor guard as well, though with Galra notions of formality it was always hard to say) would have joined them at the table directly. But Coran hovered behind and between Alfor and Melenor, just as he did when the Paladins met, or diplomatic meetings were held with other allies or government bodies. Alfor sat at the head of the table, where he had so often placed Zarkon instead simply to keep him from blocking anyone's view of each other, and Queen Melenor sat at her father's left hand as well, while Allura sat to his immediate right: and Allura could not so much as look at their place settings without hearing it, drilled and repeated as part of her training, that this was how it _must_ be; that as an alchemist-king he _must_ be certain to seat a warrior at his weak hand to guard him; as a father, that his child (whether nearly a warrior herself or not, it did not matter) _must_ sit at his strong hand to be guided by him.

Zarkon had resisted all attempts to seat him anywhere other than between her and Lotor simply by ignoring them.

Alfor had not stopped shooting him sullen looks since.

Melenor kept the conversation moving: benign, serene, polite, but still something more formal and fragile than a simple family dinner; still something more familial and close than the visiting head of another Coalition empire. Allura could only imagine how mad Zarkon's honor guard were going trying to read the room. She had seen them posted around the room, one to each wall. She supposed that they had posted themselves as well as they could have to cover all of the entrances and exits in a hurry should something happen. Every so often she would look over and watch as Coran's or her father's eyes drifted over towards one of them, stoic as drones, still as statues, and then look to each other with a shake of the head and seemingly infinitely deepening frowns.

“--and how _are_ you feeling now, Lotor?” Melenor leaned forward slightly as she asked. Allura could not see Lotor from where she sat on the far side of Zarkon from him, but she heard him move and saw Zarkon shift as well as if, somehow, someone as small as Lotor could have required him to do so to accommodate it. “I understand you're feeling much better. You _look_ much better.”

“Yes ma'am, Queen Melenor,” he answered. His voice still seemed impossibly quiet and even a bit hoarse, but Allura felt a tension move out of her shoulders that she hadn't realized she'd been carrying. It was the first time she'd heard him speak in a phoeb, and however he looked somehow that he still _sounded_ like himself was a far deeper relief she hadn't known she needed. “I feel much better now.”

“You don't need to be formal. We're all family here.”

“Yes. I'm sorry.”

“You don't have to be sorry, either.”

Lotor paused. “Yes,” he said at last.

Melenor smiled at him, patiently. “Have you gotten any sleep?”

“Yes.”

“Good. That's good. I'm glad to hear it. I know it's been troublesome for you.”

Lotor said nothing. Zarkon said nothing. Silverware scraped dishes so impossibly loudly that Allura felt her ears twitching and wished that she had left her hair loose enough to cover them. She looked at her father (and Coran, and the two of them frowning at one of the honor guards on the wall, frowning at each other), and then back down at the table in front of her. Her first bite of food had stung the hole in her lip, and now her plate looked sickeningly and unmanageably full. She picked up her cup and drank instead so she would not simply be sitting there with her hands in her lap and nothing to do with them.

“Are you eating enough?”

Allura's eyes flicked up guiltily, but Melenor's attention was still angled away from her.

“I have ensured as much while I have been here, Melenor,” Zarkon assured her. He spoke softly, his voice a quiet rumble that still carried over every other sound at the table. “And I promise to do so as well tonight.”

She flashed him a smile. “I'm sorry to fuss so. We've just all been worried.”

“Your care is noted and appreciated, as always.”

“We tried to make sure that there was some animal protein with dinner for you all. He's done well on an Altean diet, of course, but I thought it might do him some good--”

“Well it's probably going to upset his stomach a bit,” Alfor interrupted. “Don't you think? He isn't really used to it, after all. Altean diet being what it is.”

Zarkon was quiet for a moment. Allura peeked up at him from where she sat beside him, but could not read his expression as he looked back at Alfor. His eyes were narrow, but it was as likely the bright lights of the dining hall as anything else. “You are quick to assume,” he said at last, “that a young Galra will not hunt to supplement their own diet--”

Alfor scoffed faintly, not quite a laugh. Allura also could not help but stifle a sound into her cup; the idea of Lotor hunting _anything_ except perhaps a comfortably dim alcove in which to read was absurd at best.

Though he allowed them the moment, Zarkon continued as soon as it was clear they were not going to burst into gales of laughter, just as smoothly as though he had never been interrupted at all. “--and also that I did not bring him anything from home in the meantime. As quickly as Alteans adapt the world around them, Galra adapt to it. He will be fine with a little.”

Alfor's brows rose, mouth wry. “You heard he wasn't well so you brought him food to make him sick?”

“There is more than enough medicine for ill stomachs. Sometimes an ill heart needs a reminder of home instead.”

Alfor chuckled, raising his glass as if for a brief, one-man toast. “All right, all right. I'll concede it. Your 'father of the decaphoeb' status is safe, Zarkon.”

Zarkon shifted slightly. Allura couldn't be sure if it was uncomfortably or not; his face remained largely stoic. “In any case, Lotor knows how animal protein sits with him now. He will eat it if he likes. If not, I will remain appreciative of the gesture and the intent behind it.”

Alfor stared at him a moment, then flicked a seed off of his plate. Melenor smacked him in the arm so immediately her hand might have been strung to his elbow by a cord, but it still bounced smartly off of Zarkon's nose. Allura bit down a giggle and heard Lotor stifle the same. “Stop being so formal.”

“I am literally always like this.”

“Listen to this. Listen to this man _lie._ ” Alfor gestured to Zarkon broadly, looking about the table with an expression of deeply exaggerated incredulity. “You hear this, Allura? This is what it's like making friends with Galra—just lies, all the time. Wall to wall _falsehood_ and _deception_.”

“Alfor.”

“What, Mel? Am I wrong?”

Melenor narrowed her eyes at him slightly, was met with no repentance soever, and looked to Zarkon as if for support. He simply raised one hand and quietly intoned, with deepest formality and deepest solemnity, “ _Nivzverit galra.”_

Alfor cackled. Melenor's ears pinned so sharply they vanished.

Lotor asked, “Why?”

For one moment, Allura saw a look cross her mother's face that she had never seen before, brief and terrible and frightening; like a trainee who had just taken a blow they weren't prepared for but also not quite definable in how there-and-gone-again it was. “It's just a saying,” she said. Her smile was serene and composed. The blow to the gut might never have happened. “An old Galra joke these two never quite tired of telling, though I wish they would.”

Alfor opened his mouth, then closed it again quickly, sound clicking off in his throat. From the twitch of his jaw, Allura suspected that her mother might have kicked him under the table. “Well, not a joke, that is--” Again, his jaw hitched, jerking up just the smallest bit. He coughed and took a bite of food to cover it. “Well. Zarkon says it all the time. More than anyone, really. It doesn't mean what it used to.”

Allura frowned slightly. _Nivzverit galra._ Certainly, she knew the phrase. With variously rough pronunciation she had heard it from all of the Paladins who had sat around this table together, and yes, most of all from Zarkon himself; even murmured softly among his honor guards and various Galra notables and civilians she'd seen about, in streets or on screens, bumped heads or knuckles, quick, almost military motions, always _nivzverit galra,_ always _vrepit sa._ Certainly, she supposed, they said it differently among themselves. “You all use it the same way I always remember.”

Melenor's smile tightened. _I'm sorry, mother,_ hung on the tip of her tongue. She ducked her face back into her cup and tried to swallow it.

Lotor squirmed audibly in his seat. “It means don't trust Galra, doesn't it, just like he said? Why would that be a joke? I don't understand.”

Above them all (perhaps a boulder among small birds after all; perhaps he always would be; perhaps nothing could change that or take it away at all), Zarkon turned towards him, reaching out, almost certainly to bury one of Lotor's tiny shoulders beneath his massive hand in comfort. “Like all things in our language, Lotor, it can mean many things—and that is one of the things that it can mean, especially here, where the language works very differently. That the words you think you hear are not always what a Galra is saying. For all that Altea has the best academies in the Coalition, your education has still been lacking. It seems a proper Galra _dayak_ would do you some good after all.”

Alfor snorted. The sound was light enough, but the loud jangle of his fork dropped to his plate made Allura's ears flinch down again. “Oh, what are _they_ going to teach him, Zarkon? Folklore and nationalism?”

“Proper Galra, for one.”

“That's what translators are for.”

“ _My son_ should not need a translator to speak his native tongue. Nor will a translator tell him its history.”

“You know, he's _also_ Altean. It's his 'native tongue' as much as Galra is and he's been _here_ more of his life than he was ever--”

“But _why_ do you say it, father? And why does Alfor? Aren't you supposed to trust your friends? Does he think I'm a liar, too?”

“Oh, no, that-- Friends say a lot of things they don't mean,” Alfor said quickly. Allura had rarely seen him look so embarrassed, almost ashamed. “No, I'm sorry Lotor, you're right—I shouldn't joke about it, because it isn't true, and certainly not in front of you. I _do_ trust Zarkon. I trust your father with my life: I have before, and I will again.”

“We all do,” Melenor added.

“And we all-- Well, we all know you're a very honest young man, and you'd never mean anyone any harm.” His jaw twitched. This time, Allura caught the faint ripple in the material of her mother's dress across the table just before it.

“No one,” Melenor said, her emphasis small, subtle, but hard; all silk and iron, always, “would ever question your intentions or integrity, Lotor. You're a very good boy, and you're going to grow into a very good man. It's a wretched saying and it ought to be banned.”

Allura frowned again. Something about her mother's words felt unsettling: not wrong, perhaps, but certainly not quite right. The entire conversation rushed in her ears like wind, like waves, like static. What was this talk about Galra tutors? _Was_ Lotor going to leave? Her father was right though, wasn't he, that Lotor had been on Altea for far more of his life than he had ever been on Daibazaal? Surely it was better for his health, mind and body and most of all soul? Her mother had been right, hadn't she, that it was what was best for him to stay?

She jumped as Zarkon's great hands settled, quietly but quite suddenly and heavily, on the table to either side of his plate just beside her. The entire furniture fixture was connected directly and firmly to the floor, but it still shook with the impact, however gentle. “This dining hall is quite bright, and my eyes are not what they used to be. Asking the forgiveness of my host and family, I would like to take my leave early.”

“You _really_ don't need to be so formal, Zarkon,” Melenor reminded him.

“Anyway we can have the lights dimmed.” Alfor propped his elbow up on the table, cocking a finger up at Zarkon. “I ask you all the time, 'let me dim the lights for you, Zarkon', and you always give some excuse why you think I shouldn't. I'm starting to think you'd be offended if I kept the lights down low.”

“You were going to have dinner with six Galra in attendance. Am I the only one whose well-being you considered beforehand?”

Alfor rolled his eyes and sighed. “Yes, yes. You and your guard. And then there was me, and Mel, and Allura, and Coran; and Lotor's only half, and lives here, so I know he's fine; and the staff. You know most of the people here, we're not nocturnal creatures, meant for skulking about in the dark--”

“The Galra,” Zarkon said, something in his soft tone both delicate and piercing, “are also not creatures.”

There was a beat of terrible silence. Allura felt her short nails digging into her palm through her napkin as she clutched it suddenly in her hand. Her back stayed straight as she watched Zarkon and her father watching each other, each unmoving. Her teeth dug into the hole in her lip, but somehow no new blood came, as if frozen in her veins. Somewhere, as if from far away, she smelled fire and the burning cold of stasis chamber gasses, real and impossible and never-there as holes in the sky.

Alfor scoffed and waved a hand. Something brittle in the room popped around the sound, but did not break. “You know what I meant. Don't make it something dramatic.”

Zarkon continued to watch him. Slowly, he pushed his chair back and stood. “I am taking my leave from dinner early. Thank you again.”

“Of course, Zarkon,” Melenor said. She sounded subdued, almost muffled. “I'm terribly sorry about the lights. We have Galra at dinner so rarely anymore, it never occurred to me. We do miss you here.”

“You are all loved, and missed, and remembered when we are apart.” Allura almost jumped out of her skin as great claws brushed her shoulder gently. An inclusion, somehow still distant, somehow sad. She thought again of the remembrance ceremony; of the sense of familiarity she had, without meaning to, revoked from him as he cried against her. She thought again of holes in the sky and a smell of fire. Her shoulders curled in. His hand vanished. “And so you are with us always. Lotor?”

From Lotor, silence. Allura peered over at him around the edge of her hair, just barely turning her head. Now that Zarkon had stepped back from the table she could see him clearly: certainly better than the quintants before, his eyes less dim, his skin tone more stable, no longer twitching and shifting through tones just beneath the surface. Still as always dressed in red and black: not a bird beside the boulder of his father but a pebble, unmoving unless taken up by another. His hands were twisted together in his lap and his eyes stayed fixed on the table in front of him. His childish jaw was set; it looked more futile than resolute. “I...I would like to stay, father.”

“Perhaps that is best. You should eat--”

“On. On Altea, father.”

Zarkon's hand froze, only for a moment, in the motion of moving to Lotor's shoulder. It hovered over him, terrible mass, terrible claws casting shadows over his face, and for a moment when he did not so much as look up from the table in front of him Allura found herself, madly, wanting to cry a warning out to him. She wanted to lunge across the vacant seat between them and snatch him up.

The hesitation passed. Zarkon's hand finished the motion, claws barely ruffling Lotor's hair as he brushed his fingertips over him; the hair, the shoulder, the fragile jaw that still sat as firm as it could but maybe, she thought, trembling just a little bit?

Across the table, Melenor opened her mouth to speak.

“Perhaps that is best,” Zarkon said.

And then he was gone.

The room teetered in weird silence until the hall door closed behind him. Then Coran coughed; Alfor blew out a long breath. “He's always _so dramatic.”_

Melenor kicked him under the table again.

“What? What, I'm not wrong! Lotor, your father is even more dramatic than I am. The only person I know more dramatic than him is Coran--

“Here now,” Coran protested behind him.

“--Don't you mind any of it. _”_

“Alfor.” But it was all Melenor said; her face was calm, her mouth was tight, and that was enough for Alfor to put his hands up and go back to dinner; and later, Allura knew, when the children were not right there and watching them, or the staff, or Zarkon's honor guard squinting around the edges of the room, she would take his elbow and pull him aside and ask him in bluntly hushed tones if the they could not just _once_ leave whatever they were fighting about out in the halls, and Alfor would tell her that he didn't know what she was talking about because he and Zarkon _never_ fought, none of them did anymore, that was the entire _point_ of the Coalition, wasn't it, and Melenor would stare him down, her neutrality deafening, until finally she released him and he retreated into his lab for the rest of the evening. She knew all of this because it had happened before; it had happened so a hundred thousand times before with the five of them all there in their armor, and sometimes it wasn't Zarkon at all it was Gyrgan, or perhaps Trigel, even Blaytz once or twice, but from around hallway corners or pressed up against closed doors the rhythms were always the same, as chaotic from the outside and rigidly structured and practiced from within as the dance of combatant and Gladiator around the training hall.

She caught herself smiling, just a little, and wondered if it was wrong to take comfort in that.

Across the gap at the table Zarkon had left beside her, Lotor slowly untangled his fists from their knot in his lap. “I won't,” he said quietly. “Thank you for allowing to me stay.”

“We're all family here,” Melenor reminded him again. “This is also your home, Lotor.”

“Thank you for allowing me to stay,” he repeated firmly.

Allura sipped at her drink and turned her eyes away from him. His eyes had been swimming and she didn't want to be staring at him if he started to cry. She didn't want him to cry in the first place, to feel like he _had_ to cry, especially now when it seemed there was no reason for it at all. Her mother and father exchanged a troubled glance. She watched them toss the burden of response, wordlessly, motionlessly, between themselves.

“Well,” she said at last, louder than she'd meant to, what felt like wincing loud, her own ears twitching down again at the sound of her voice, “if Zarkon's not going to finish eating, I call dibs on his dessert.”

“What?” Lotor straightened in his seat. From the corner of her eye, she saw him scowl. “No, he's my father, I ought to get it.”

“You ought to have spoken up more quickly then.”

“You aren't even eating your dinner!”

“And you don't even like sweets.” She watched her parents' tense shoulders unwind. Whether because the surrender of whatever weird brittle formality _had_ characterized the meal was all right now that the visiting head of state was gone, or because it was worth it to defuse Lotor's clear unease, her mother gave her a faint nod and smile of tacit approval. Allura could hardly imagine anything more emboldening. She reached over and put the tips of her fingers on Zarkon's plate, preventing it from floating away from the table, so that the servant who had come to retrieve it paused in doing so. She looked up to them with a faint smile. “So would you mind terribly having the extra dessert set aside for me?”

“Of course, princess.”

“That isn't fair,” Lotor protested again.

“You don't even like sweets.”

“Well...well, neither does father.” He stuck his chin out a bit, stubbornly. “And lots of Altean food is sweet. I like it just fine.”

Alfor watched them for a moment, amused, then lifted a finger. “We had some xiquala melon set aside for him, actually.”

Allura made a faint face before she could stop herself, crinkling up her nose in distaste as if someone had placed a slice of the bitter fruit in her mouth even as he said it. Lotor brightened considerably. He wheeled on her immediately, pointing at her face. “There! You don't even like xiquala melon!”

“ _You're_ a xiquala melon.”

“All right, children.” Melenor raised one hand, then lowered it slowly, palm down. “That's enough of that. Lotor, it isn't polite to point.”

He settled back into his seat, eartips darkening faintly, and planted his hands back into his lap. “I'm sorry, Queen Melenor, ma'am.”

“Please don't be so formal, Lotor.”

Alfor broke in before Lotor had a chance to correct himself or, perhaps worse, double down again. “If you like it so much, we could give you Zarkon's melon and give Allura your dessert--”

Lotor looked stricken. Melenor swatted Alfor's arm. He laughed.

After a while Coran joined them at the table, and they finished the meal that way: a proper family dinner.

* * *

“Are you angry at me, father?”

Lotor sat on the edge of the immense guest bed in the room set aside rather specifically for Zarkon's use when he visited. The bed showed no signs of having been slept in during the current visit, and in fact the creases on the sheets where Lotor gripped the edge very tightly were the only ones marring them at all. Lotor suspected that his father did not like Altean-styled beds in general: Zarkon had one of his own at home on Daibazaal and Lotor could not remember a time that he had ever known his father to sleep in that one, either.

(He could not, in point of fact, remember ever knowing his father to sleep _at all,_ which was absurd: he had been told at least once on Altea that Galra did not sleep but simply went passive, waiting to ambush, but he at least knew _this_ to be blatantly false; _he_ slept, though lightly, and his father's honor guards slept in shifts; on this particular visit most of his own sleeping that had not happened in his father's arms had been done curled up between two of them, heartbeats to either side of him, Paska's snores or the soft whistle around Illu's crooked tooth or Vekredi's gentle wheeze over his head; Galra did not sleep much at a run but to say anyone didn't sleep _at all_ was ridiculous, he simply hadn't caught his father at it yet because they spent so much time apart and)

Now, as when Lotor had first entered, Zarkon was sitting in the darkened room with his chin in one hand as he went over messages sent from Daibazaal on a tablet. He sat by the window, and the faint magenta glow of the screen was less than that of the cooler light of the castle grounds after dark coming in from outside; like the glow of his eyes it lit him up less than it emphasized the shadows on him. There seemed to be so many. Had there always been so many?

His eyes rose from the tablet. The depth of his frown, already an awful black canyon, somehow deepened further. “Why would I be angry at you?”

Immediately Lotor's eyes dropped to his own knees where they stuck out over the edge of the bed. His feet rubbed together awkwardly. The question had not felt foolish until just that moment. Something, some puzzled quality, in his father's tone made it feel not only foolish but accusatory. Why _would_ he be angry? Because it had been a stupid question, of course: because he had started a fight at dinner, because his father had been on the tablet dealing with matters on Daibazaal already when Lotor came in the room and he _ought_ to be back there, doing Emperor Things, and not all the way on Altea dealing with Lotor's irrational childish monster-related jitters and stupid questions, why _wouldn't_ he be angry

_(but had he ever really seen his father get angry? He felt like he knew that he got angry and ought to get angry but had he ever seen him do it_

> _(no he didn't think that he had)_
> 
> _(But surely he had at least heard stories about)_
> 
> _(where? From who?)_

_any more than he had seen him sleep?)_

was a better question, wasn't it?

His father was still looking at him as he sat there, squirming faintly and not answering. His brows were drawn down. He did not _look_ angry. Worried, maybe. But not angry.

_(and now he felt silly_

> _(stupid)_
> 
> _(guilty)_

_for asking)_

“You wouldn't explain,” he blurted suddenly. It wasn't why he had asked. But it had started the fight at dinner, hadn't it? It was as good a reason as any. “I mean. Not really. I thought that maybe... Maybe I asked something I shouldn't have? But I wanted-- I don't understand, father.”

The tablet's warm light disappeared as Zarkon set it face down on the table beside the window. His chin left his hand, both palms coming down on the arms of his seat as his attention in its entirety focused forward onto Lotor. Lotor braced himself without really knowing for what. His grip on the edge of the bed tightened, his heels tucking up against its side without really knowing why.

But “It's my fault,” was what Zarkon said. “I should have had a _dayak_ here with you from the beginning.”

He didn't want a _dayak_ to explain it to him. He wanted his _father_ to explain it to him. He chewed on his lip and tried to think of how to say it(because knowing the words was not the same as knowing how to say it, or why it mattered, or

_(what were the words for the feeling? Didn't he know enough languages to have a way to say it?_

> _(maybe there wasn't a word for it maybe it wasn't something Galra or Alteans were supposed to feel)_

_was it a selfish feeling maybe it was better that he didn't have a way to say it)_

maybe it didn't really matter much anyway, maybe he was fussing over nothing) before he decided not to say it at all. He drew his shoulders up a little instead and looked up at his father without lifting his head. Zarkon peered back at him with his brows still drawn down. “I...I do _know_ Galra, father. I haven't-- I don't want to-- I'm not going to forget how to speak it.”

“I know that.”

“I just don't understand why you say _that_.”

“I know.” Zarkon rose from his seat and moved to sit beside Lotor on the bed. It creaked beneath his weight, the mattress sinking down so that Lotor could not help but tip against him before both resettled. “And that is my fault. And I will correct it. But I cannot stay here to teach you, Lotor.”

And there it was. All of a sudden. The words were out, and Lotor had not said them himself at all. He drew his legs up entirely, turning his back to plant it against the firm wall of his father's side and pulling his knees up tight to his chest, hugging them there. Zarkon shifted his arm and looked down at him: he could feel the movement without seeing it. After a moment, the arm lowered slightly, and his father's palm rest gently over his head, barely touching. (He wasn't so delicate his father had to be so careful all the time but he always was _(no he wasn't)_ or at least he seemed to be)

They sat in silence like that. Zarkon said nothing. Lotor wanted him to say something, _anything_ would have been fine. An explanation or a question or a reassurance or a command—anything at all. But they sat in silence instead, the weight of the hand on his head more something imagined or anticipated than felt, the breathing behind him deep and even and steady. He seemed impossibly warm; the scent of his father, in a room that somehow still smelled of juniberries and Altean attendants--clean and sharp and unlived in--impossibly dark and smoky. He did not feel like a guest in the room but an invasive presence, unwelcome, rejected completely. His thumb moved carefully, ruffling Lotor's hair in a faint wave, letting it fall back again, then sweeping it back into disarray. Lotor could feel his own heartbeat, small and fluttery and unreliable, but not his father's. It seemed unfair.

_(I'm sorry I panicked over nothing)_

_(I'm sorry I dragged you away from home)_

_(I'm sorry I ask such stupid questions)_

_(I'm sorry I know every Galra ought to know but I don't I'm_

> _(sorry I started a fight you must hate fighting with them))_

_(I'm sorry I)_

“Are you angry at me,” He asked again at last, muffled into the tops of his knees, “because I want to stay?”

Zarkon's thumb stopped. Lotor squeezed his eyes shut. His body flinched into itself.

“When did you start being afraid of me?”

“I'm not.” He wasn't. _(was he?)_ If he had been at all afraid of his father, even the smallest bit, he never would have cried out for him when he saw the thing that had pretended to be his mother. _(but why did he ask?)_ If he had doubted his father's love for him, even the smallest bit, even for a moment, he never would have trusted that-- “I could never be afraid of you.”

Zarkon hummed faintly. Lotor felt it vibrate through his back. “Don't say that, either.”

“Why?”

“Fear is a warning. If I become frightening, you should trust yourself to be afraid.” His hand pressed down, briefly, over Lotor's head. For a moment, he was still. Quiet. “...We endure dark thoughts and dark waters: we do not ignore them.”

Lotor felt his face warm, his ears pitching down slightly. “Yes, father. I'm sorry.”

“Should we work on your Admonitions?”

His face felt even hotter. He leaned forward out from under his father's hand and off of his father's side with a groan as he tried to burrow his face further into his knees to no avail. “No father, please, I'd rather not.”

“Why are you so flustered? It isn't shameful to need practice. It took me a long time to learn the imperial standard--”

 _(I don't believe in them)_ “I always say them wrong. Even when I copy you _exactly_ I say them wrong.”

There was another long moment of quiet. Then the surface of the bed lurched upward again as Zarkon rose. He did so only for a moment before kneeling on the floor beside it instead, reaching out to turn Lotor towards himself. He did not attempt to pry Lotor from his protective curl, but instead leaned in, lightly placing his forehead against him. “...Are you staying because you're happy here, Lotor?”

Yes. No. Probably? Well, of course, he must be—why would he have wanted to stay, after all, if he wasn't? For his education, he supposed—so he could become a great alchemist, like his mother. It was what he wanted; it would make him happy to achieve; he knew these things. And so he must be happy to be here, beginning the pursuit of it, surely. Still he opened his mouth, then closed it again, tightening his arms around himself in silence.

“It's all right not to know.” One of his father's great hands curled around him, and he was pressed back into it as the pressure of their heads resting together grew briefly stronger. He would have been knocked over entirely if it hadn't been there. “If we knew everything, there would be nothing left to learn.”

He had never met her, but he knew the words were his mother's, not his father's. He began to tremble without wanting to. Without really knowing why. He wanted to ask about her. Had she loved it here, had she missed it while she was away? Had she hated it here, was that why she had stayed on Daibazaal? He knew that she hadn't been a monster. He knew that she hadn't been the thing that had come for him, (that led _that thing_ here _(what thing? Not the monster--Who had said that?))_ old and twisted and hateful, smelling of smoke as much as juniberries. Smelling so much of blood and the weird, acrid-hot distillate smell of the meteor scar samples that it could have been nothing _but_ a monster pretending at any other face.

When his mother said _nivzverit galra,_ how had she said it?

He reached out one hand and gripped Zarkon's crest, clinging to him.

_(you brought that thing here father (no) you brought it you believed it you told me it was my mother (and you protected me (when you saw the monster)) but you didn't see the monster when it came to you, you didn't see the monster because you didn't)_

“Are you staying because you think it will help you be happy?”

_(because you thought about mother (stop) before you thought about me (stop it) even though mother is dead and I'm still here)_

> _(that's not true)_
> 
> _(yes_ _it_ _is)_

“Yes,” he said, very quietly into the dark between knee and arm, so that he could hardly hear himself. “I...I think so.”

Zarkon's fingers touched the backs of his carefully, engulfing them without trying to. “Then there is no call for me to be angry. And if you promise me, Lotor, that you will _always_ choose to pursue happiness, then I will promise you that I will _never_ be angry with your choices. I will never be sad or disappointed with them. Because I never want you to sacrifice your happiness for my sake, or think that you have to. And Daibazaal will always be there for you to come home to when you are ready.”

He mouthed the word 'okay', but made very little sound at all. Something breathy and inarticulate that made him feel smaller than he was. The way his father's subtle emphasis made him feel smaller than he was. _Home_ would always be there, yes. But who _(what)_ would be waiting?

The sound became a yelp as he was quite suddenly scooped up into the air in his father's arms. He flailed for a moment, then clung in place. “Now. Your breath smells like xiquala. Clean your teeth—you want them to be good when you start losing them.”

Lotor kept his head against his father's. He did not care if his teeth were good when he started losing them, only that they were good while he still had them. Like the Admonitions, the act of giving them would not mean to him what it meant to his father. “...Did it really take you a long time to learn the Admonitions, too?”

“I'm going to send a _dayak_ who can teach you Yasynru _,_ and you can guess how badly _my_ accent tripped up my efforts.”

Lotor wrinkled up his nose. “That's not what your tribe's called, father.”

“Not in imperial standard.”

“ _And_ you don't have an accent.”

“All part of my clever disguise. You learn these things.” Lotor leaned back in his arms, squinting at him—not suspicious, not really, nothing so definite or assertive, but not quite entirely sure if his father was sincere or not. After a moment, Zarkon smiled faintly, pressing their heads together a moment more, and then set him down. “...You used to learn these things,” he amended gently. “It was more important to learn these things when I was young. _Nivzverit galra—_ what you think you hear is not always the whole truth. But the world is better now.”

They were King Alfor's words, and Coran's, not his father's. Lotor knew because he had heard them said around the castle a thousand times before. Much more often, certainly, that he ever heard _nivzverit galra_ , and so why shouldn't they be more important or true?

 _(even if the world was not so much better that_ nivzverit galra _was no longer something that was said at all)_

His father had told him to go and clean his teeth. It seemed vastly more appealing than standing there uncomfortably, trying to puzzle through the things said and unsaid, or _why_ they were said and unsaid, and so he dipped his head in a hasty bow and hurried away. He paused near the door and looked back into the room, where his father still stood beside the bed, watching him. “Can I sleep in here tonight, father?”

“Of course. As long as I won't keep you up by working.”

“I'll cover my face.”

So he left, and when he returned and found his father working again he did not go to the Altean bed (almost untouched, his father's scent already fading from it as though _he_ had never touched it at all) but climbed into his lap and pressed his face against his stomach to cover his face from the light. It was childish—like an infant seeking the warmth of a parent's pouch—but Zarkon did not stop him. Lotor was vaguely aware of one hand coming down and curling around his back. “Please don't go home right away,” he murmured. “I know I decided, but--”

“I promise.”

_(selfish)_

> _(listen to this man_ lie _)_
> 
> _(nivzverit galra)_
> 
> _(shut up shut up shut up)_

He slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long hiatus, I am working on the next chapter and a couple of other big projects, wish me luck!.


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